(I Can’t Get No) Batting Average
Yesterday Jon Sciambi shared a tweet with a few, seemingly impossible stats:
MLB slash into today 232/310/390…BA would be lowest ever…in 2008 about 42% of swings put balls in play, this year 35.4%. In 08 the swing/miss % was 20% and this year it is 27.3%. Yikes.
— Jon Sciambi (@GoGala__Games) April 26, 2021
Yikes indeed. While all of those numbers are concerning on their own, it’s actually the batting average figure that most struck me. If a .232 league batting average sounds absurdly low to you, you’re not wrong. In fact, it’s the lowest since at least the turn of the twentieth century. The .232 mark is five points worse than the league hit in 1968, when Bob Gibson spun a 1.12 ERA, only one American Leaguer managed to hit .300, and nearly a quarter of the season’s games ended in a shutout. It’s also seven points lower than the worst collective batting average of the Dead Ball Era, a year the league slugged .305. And it’s far, far lower than anything in recent memory:
| Year | Batting Average |
|---|---|
| 2021 | .232 |
| 2020 | .245 |
| 2018 | .248 |
| 2014 | .251 |
| 2019 | .252 |
| 2013 | .253 |
| 1989 | .254 |
| 1988 | .254 |
| 2015 | .254 |
Say what you will about Three True Outcomes baseball, a batting average this low is a bit of a problem. And while the magnitude of the problem may come as a bit of a shock, the “why” is pretty easy to explain.
Much of it can be attributed to strikeouts, of course. Pitchers are fanning their opponents 24.6% of the time, up from 23.4% in last year’s shortened season. Strikeout rates seemingly only go up each year, but it’s worth noting that this is a pretty dramatic uptick even by that standard, easily the largest year-over-year we’ve seen this century. (Hat tip to Marc Webster for noticing.)
It’s not just strikeouts though, as BABIP is also a big part of the story. Over the last two decades, as seemingly everything else evolved, BABIP remained remarkably constant. Since the league BABIP’d .289 in 2002, hitters have posted a figure between .291 and .299 every year since. There’s not much of a correlation between BABIP and strikeouts in that time, either: The league hit .291 on balls in play in 2003, and .296 in 2019, when both strikeouts and the home run rate were considerably higher.
This year though? This year batters are hitting .282 on balls in play. The league hasn’t been this low since the late 1980s, and it’s by far the lowest figure in the last 25 years.
Why is BABIP cratering all of the sudden? Partly, it’s an April thing. Like homers and batting average, BABIP tends to be a little lower in April. Over the last decade, BABIP has risen after April in each season, by about five points overall. It also might be partly a shifting thing. Defenses have shifted on a third of plate appearances this year, which is actually down a tiny bit from 2020, but up nearly 200% since 2018. While shifting isn’t particularly effective in the aggregate, shifts do convert contact into outs more efficiently than un-shifted defenses. It makes intuitive sense that the increase in shifts would harm BABIP at some point.
The league’s batted ball profile also comes in to play here. The GB/FB ratio is as low as it has ever been, and with a 13.3% HR/FB rate, plenty of balls in the air are either falling into gloves or flying over the wall, neither of which is good for BABIP. It makes sense that some combination of cold weather in April, combined with an increase in shifts and fly balls is to blame. I’d like to examine exit velocity here as well, but given some weird factors surrounding the composition of this year’s ball, I’m worried that any cross-comparison between seasons would add more ambiguity than it would correct.
Regardless of the reasons, the fact remains that the league is hitting .232. As with 1968, the average is low enough to have a visibly distortive effect on the field. Already, we’ve had three no-hitters this year, with more surely on the way (I’m counting Madison Bumgarner’s, dammit). The Braves, victims of Bumgarner Sunday afternoon, only had one hit in the first game of the twin bill as well. The Yankees are hitting .206 as a team, which is wretched, but it’s not even the worst in baseball, as the Tigers are hitting .205.
To think of it another way, when Kiley McDaniel rolled out his 20-80 scouting primer, a .260 batting average was considered average, a 50 grade. When I interned with the Mariners a year earlier in 2013, the team’s scale was delightfully more granular but followed the same basic rhythms:
| Grade | Batting Average |
|---|---|
| 80 | .340+ |
| 75 | .322-.339 |
| 70 | .313-.321 |
| 65 | .304-.312 |
| 60 | .290-.303 |
| 55 | .273-.289 |
| 50 | .257-.273 |
| 45 | .241-.256 |
| 40 | .226-.240 |
| 35 | .216-.225 |
| 30 | .201-.215 |
| 20 | .000-.200 |
Arguably, these charts were already a touch out of date: The league as a whole hit .255 in 2012 and hadn’t fallen in the middle of the range listed above (where, logically, you’d expect to find a 50 bat) for five years.
Still if that looked a tick off back then, it looks downright antiquated now. If we were to take the system Kiley debuted back in 2014, where each half-grade represents a 10-point climb in batting average, and center it around the .232 average the league is producing now, the updated version looks something like this:
| Grade | Batting Average |
|---|---|
| 80 | .292 |
| 75 | .282 |
| 70 | .272 |
| 65 | .262 |
| 60 | .252 |
| 55 | .242 |
| 50 | .232 |
| 45 | .222 |
| 40 | .212 |
| 35 | .202 |
| 30 | .192 |
| 20 | .180 |
Obviously, this is an imperfect exercise, and for weather-related reasons if nothing else, we can expect the average to climb higher over the course of the year. Still, it’s striking: If you can hit .255 these days, you’re a plus hitter.
Along the way, a rational feedback spiral has developed on major league rosters. In a game where fewer balls are in play, teams can afford to cut corners on defense. Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Vaughn have all the range of a traffic cone in left field, but in a small park without all that many balls coming their way, the White Sox can get away with hiding them in left in a way they couldn’t even 10 years ago. The same goes for Dominic Smith, Ryan Mountcastle, and several others.
Something similar happens around the infield, where guys like Ty France are standing well out of position because teams can mitigate a bad gloveman’s damage with intelligent shifting, creative shading, and a 25% strikeout rate. Almost inevitably, the guys playing out of position are power hitters, and the consequence of all of this is that teams are able to squeeze more and more mashers into the lineup.
In response, pitchers have ever more incentive to miss bats and managers are increasingly motivated to ensure that only their best starters face a lineup a third time. The average start this season is under five innings, and you can count the number of pitchers averaging six frames an outing on two hands. Part of that undoubtedly stems from workload and injury concerns after 2020, but it’s also clear that managers will go to their 95-mph-and-a-slider guys in the fifth inning so long as they have enough arms to grind through the rest of the game. Which, of course, they do: the rule limiting teams to 13 pitchers has fallen by the wayside, and at last glance several teams were carrying 14 hurlers. (As a side note, I’m reasonably confident that if teams were given 30-man rosters, we’d see plenty of 17- and 18-pitcher staffs, and in turn even shorter outings from most starters). The only way to beat the inevitable steady dose of high-octane heat is to swing for the fences and pray like hell for contact, which leads to more whiffs… which restarts the loop all over again.
I think that most fans at this point have a pretty good sense that the shape of offense in the major leagues these days is quite a bit different than it was in previous decades. But as the league’s average slumps into the low-.230s, it’s worth reviewing recent history and the path ahead. As you may recall, the first batch of the livelier balls debuted in mid-2015, right when teams were scoring fewer runs per game than at any point since the pre-strike era. While the league denied making the change intentionally, goosing the ball made a certain amount of sense: a lively pill could help keep offense afloat and prevent pitchers from gaining the upper hand and perhaps buy time for teams or the league to solve the underlying imbalance between pitching hitting.
Now, we’re now six years down the road from that. A look at the early season numbers and Rob Arthur’s work suggests we’re playing with the second liveliest ball in history, and the league is hitting .230 with a sub-.400 slugging percentage (lower than all pre-juiced ball seasons save for 2014). Scoring hasn’t fallen to 2014 or early-2015 levels, but it’s close. Barring intervention from the league, it’s hard to see the trend toward the Three True Outcomes decelerating, much less reversing.
Whether all of this is a bad thing, of course, depends on personal preference. It’s not like a low batting average ruins the sport or anything. Personally, I think this has been a very compelling season so far.
At this point though, it seems that most fans would prefer a game where the ball finds outfield grass more often. The path to that outcome isn’t entirely clear: It will be hard to reverse the feedback spiral, and the twin challenge of augmenting contact without turning the sport into home run derby will prove a delicate balance to strike. The rule changes in the minor leagues are a good start in this direction, but any real alterations likely won’t come to the majors for years. Hopefully with a bit of BABIP luck, we can keep clear of the .220s until that time comes.
Brendan covers prospects and the minor leagues for FanGraphs. Previously he worked as a Pro Scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The best version of baseball–as far as watchability and diversity of things going on on the field–was the 1980s, before the Roid Era and overlapping Three True Outcomes Era. I know, I know: TTO makes statistical sense, but it makes the game far less dynamic. I miss the era of Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson, or those fun 80s Cardinals teams. Or high average hitters like Boggs and Gwynn. There were still lots of HR and walks, it just wasn’t the central focus to almost every offense.
That was a good era. But, there were downsides there too. Fast lead off hitters with low OBPs weren’t uncommon. Slap hitting 2 hole hitters with sub 700 OPSes likewise.
Oh and there were some terrible defenders getting regular playing time and even winning hold gloves.
I hear you. Those guys would be 4OF today, and probably rightly so.
I think that makes it more fun when the dynamics vary in usefulness
Vince Coleman was amazing to watch even if he wasn’t very good.
Baseball is most fun when lots of people are moving fast and there are more than three people involved in the play. When there are more homers and more strikeouts, each one is just a little less special.
But I hope MY team takes lots of walks, hits lots of homers, and strikes a lot of guys out. Unfortunately the best way to win baseball games is not always the most fun baseball to watch, but it is always more fun to watch your team win than lose.
This gets right to the heart of the matter. Everyone else’s team is definitely the problem.
Let us not forget that the Royals won the World Series a few years ago playing like it was 1985. Of course that is hard to sustain over a shortish period of time.
It also saddens me, from a stat nerd perspective, that if Mike Trout had played 30 years ago, he would have probably had at least a couple 40-40 seasons by now. As an Angels fan, I’m glad he isn’t stealing many bases as the risk is just not worth it (see, 2017). But on the other hand, he’s a slightly less dynamic player than he otherwise would be (or was in his first couple seasons).
Or imagine Shohei not only doing what he does, but throwing in 30 SB as well.
Anyhow, I’m not saying that teams should ignore the statistical weight behind TTO, but I’d like to see them mix a bit of spine in. Watching Shohei bunt was just blissful.
are we sure shohei won’t? I mean…he probably will. Coach said he was going to RF last game after he left the mound, but a blister issue they felt it was best to keep him in the game. At least we have this. It is much, much different than most players of any era.
Sometimes I feel like a lot of this is rose-tinted nostalgia. (Granted I wasn’t alive to watch 1980s baseball). But just in this most recent WS, one of the poster boys of launch angle hitting, Justin Turner, turned in wild diving tag, double plays, etc etc. And the Dodgers and Rays are among the most modern teams in the game, and I think still turned in very very memorable baseball.
I have a sinking feeling that a decent portion of this bad vibes perspective is being driven by sour grapes of old time broadcasters who maybe don’t understand the modern conception of the game, or feel threatened by the prospect of diminishing their era’s importance, or because new media and new audience/generation/player attitudes are making cable TV talking heads less valuable than they ever have been.
I for one love the baseball we’re watching, and wish that in my pre-youtube HS baseball days we had slow mo videos with graphic tails and granular detail to help me figure out how to be a better player. I wasn’t a talented or gifted JV Baseball player, but I loved playing the game, and in hindsight I was just figuring so much out without much guidance that we now have in abundance.
If you were to remove us from MLB, and say discuss the NBA instead: if a new fan unfamiliar with basketball were to see modern NBA with insanely entertaining circus shots from impossible distance with over the top celebrations, and removed all the cranky commentary about how this isn’t legitimate because you used to be able to slap players in the 1980s, then that new fan would have no idea that there was anything wrong with what they were watching.
Just my two cents. 🙂
Oh and to reply to Angelsjunky: I loved watching that Royals team. Such fun baseball. And was proof to me at the time that you can win with shaky pitching and audacious contact hitting baseball. Or even the recent Nats team that turned in the most star-heavy pitching since maybe the 2001 Diamondbacks. There are still so many ways to win in 2021, and every strategy has pros and cons that make each team vulnerable somehow and produce surprising outcomes.
1986 was the first year that I started watching baseball, so let’s arbitrarily pick that year because why not. And let’s take a look at some raw numbers for “exciting” and “boring” plays. For these purposes we’ll define SB attempts, successful or not, as exciting; extra base hits as exciting; sacrifices as exciting; and plate appearances where the ball doesn’t get put in play as boring. You can quibble (I’d also argue that groundouts tend to be more exciting than flyouts, but not enough on balance to really matter), but I feel like that’s a fair generalization. I’ll compare it to the last full season, 2019, with numbers normalized downwards to reflect there being 26 teams in 1986 and 30 teams in 2019.
In 1986 there were 3,312 SB’s; 1,620 CS’s; 6,511 2B’s; 855 3B’s; 1,175 Sacrifice Flies; 1,515 Sacrifice Hits; and 3,813 HR. Combined BB’s and K’s were 24.2% of plate appearances. There were 1,289 intentional walks, the very most boring play in baseball.
In 2019 (normalized down from 30 teams to 26), there were: 1,976 SB’s; 721 CS; 7,394 2B; 680 3B; 997 sacrifice flies; 673 sacrifice hits; and 5,873 HR. Combined BB’s and K’s were 31.5% of plate appearances. There were 653 intentional walks.
So, in terms of exciting vs. boring, what we’re seeing on the plus side in today’s game is way more home runs and marginally more doubles, plus a whole lot fewer intentional walks. On the flipside, stolen base attempts have cratered; triples have dropped off; sacrifice flies and (especially) sacrifice hits have dropped off sharply; and plate appearances that end without the ball being put in play have increased by almost a third. That is… not a recipe for more exciting baseball.
Thanks for the stats. very interesting!
I will quibble with strikeouts being strictly uninteresting, because to me that’s tantamount to saying players like Josh Hader, deGrom, or even Randy Johnson from back then, and other pitching whizzes, are not great to watch. I get that seeing some unheralded reliever strikeout a hitter with runners on can be a bummer. But for the fans of the pitcher’s team, that is the outcome they’re praying for. But future fun superstar relievers, too, can start out as unheralded bullpen filler on a middle of the pack team.
I for one can endlessly watch gifs of the crazy flight paths of pitches. and if you’re on the winning side of that exchange, it can make for really memorable baseball.
(e.g. look at Dodgers fan railing on Kenley Jansen being less dominant than he used to be. Your average angry fan isn’t giving Jansen or the team any credit for creating more “exciting” baseball by having Jansen strikeout fewer hitters.)
I saw a quote a few years ago by baseball’s official historian who said “Each person’s idealized version of how baseball should be played tends to remarkably resemble MLB when they were 7”
By this theory, you’re in your early 40s.
A lot of the things people like about 1980s baseball aren’t coming back even if there were less HRs and BBs and Ks because they’re fundamentally -inefficient ways to produce wins regardless of the run environment-. Yes, bunting and stealing bases, I am looking at you.
Well, since literally everyone in the world is my age, including the people older and younger than me, I don’t see the problem.
Stealing bases at Vince Coleman and Rickey Henderson rates are efficient ways to create wins. Stolen base rates like Harold Reynolds’ and Brett Butler’s are where we start running into trouble.
Right, but the number of players who can steal bases at that volume while maintaining efficiency is vanishingly low – too low to support it as a widespread strategy for entire teams, much less a league.
True, but, you don’t need ALL the teams to play like the 80’s Cardinals. Even 1-2 would suffice. The 80’s Cardinals were able to get 3-4 guys that COULD pull that off (Coleman, Ozzie, McGee, etc) & won. In one of their 3 WS appearances, they played the 200 HR Brewers with slow-footed Gorman Thomas in CF..why? Because he hit 40 HR’s. In one of STL’s other WS, they played The Twins, who also were a power-hitting team with a below-average defender Kirby Puckett in CF..
My point? The lack of variety is a real problem. If MLB can make it so a team COULD win with speedsters or gap hitters or whatever, it would be good because you would have different styles. & if a team wanted to load up sluggers they could..but, they may also suffer the effects on defense.
Basically the only guy attempting stealing bases like it’s the 80s is Adalberto Mondesi. He just can’t get on base enough for it to really matter.
It’s details like this that screw up a good story!!😁
wasn’t rickey henderson a wild freak of nature statistical/historical outlier, too? It’s not like each team had one of him.
Also, I wonder how much of this is on runners and how much of it comes from better pitching/catching batteries that are maybe quicker to the plate and better at throwing out runners?
Yes, yes he was. The best Rickey video I’ve seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-QDXtKHEPY
So by your theory, I should love baseball when every position player is a ‘roided up chest muscle with a bat sticking out, bashing 70 home runs a year.
I am 34! When I was 7 was in the mid 90s and that was definitely the best baseball ever. so ya, i guess you are right
Lower the mound and deaden the ball. Perhaps incentivize teams to move fences back a bit. If lowering the mound doesn’t lower strikeouts enough, move it back a foot or two.
But this doesn’t seem too hard. Lowering the mound should reduce strikeouts and deadening the ball (or moving fences back) should reduce homers. Problem solved.
Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjkuJPvMrI8
I’ve always wondered why they haven’t tried lowering the mound. Having the pitchers throw off flat ground doesn’t seem like it be a big change for them. Like you said, that plus a deader ball may be enough to shift things to a little more contact.
The only difference between 2021 and 1968 is that the livelier ball allows for some more scoring. Without the HR scoring would absolutely disappear. In 1968 the 20 teams did not even average 100 HR’s per team for the season which is much different than today.
Then again, with a lot fewer HRs, most teams would adjust back to valuing contact hitters more compared to strikeout-prone sluggers (with the A’s and Rays likely leading the way). Guys like Randal Grichuk and Tyler O’Neill would be warming the bench, or they’d maybe even be going up and down from AAA until they run out of options and eventually get designated for assignment. Other guys might change their hitting approach in the opposite way of the “fly ball revolution.”
Everybody seems to think hitters can adjust. That is not the case if only a small percentage can catch up to the velocity of today’s pitchers. The effectiveness of today’s never seen before velocity from virtually every pitcher has made hitters guess on every pitch. The days of sitting on the fastball and adjusting to the off-speed stuff is gone. If the K’s aren’t curbed it is only going to get worse and moving the mound back is probably the only solution.
That’s not true. Most MLB hitters can at least sometimes hit a 100 MPH fastball well if they’re looking for it. That’s why they can still hit so many HRs even if they fail to make much contact overall.
If HRs dropped, then the ones who can’t adjust to the new environment would just be eventually replaced by minor league prospects who can.
What are you trying to say? MLB hitters can sometimes hit a 100 mph fastball if they are looking for it. Sometimes is the key word here. Once in a while isn’t going to cut it. Unfortunately they can’t hit it often enough to avoid the dearth of base hits and plethora of strikeouts that are dominating today’s game.
I said “at least sometimes.” When they’re looking for it and it’s in the strike zone, the majority of MLB hitters can usually at least foul it off and can often hit it decently into play, especially if it’s just a straight 4-seamer (which consists of every 100+ MPH pitch not thrown by Jordan Hicks).
Overall, increased velocity has led to more K’s, but it’s mainly because it makes their other pitches more effective, hitters chasing fastballs out of the zone, some hitters who indeed have trouble catching up to the heat even when looking for it, and the biggest issue in that too many hitters have become guess hitters.
It’s not that looking fastball and adjusting for other pitches no longer works; it’s that too many hitter can’t or will not use that approach anymore!
If guys hit like 2020, Randal Grichuk will warming the bench.
Randal is however off to a great start, and other outfielders haven’t shown up.
True, but it’s still a sample size. If Grichuk actually manages to finish the season with an OBP of at least .315, then I’ll be impressed.
I doubt if those ideas do anything with the strike out problem and general lack of contact. Velocity is overwhelming the hitters making them equally helpless, or even more so, against breaking stuff and change-ups.
I disagree, if you turn flyballs into outs, then hitters will change approach and stop swinging for the seats. the old 2 strike approach doesnt exist anymore, but could return if there was incentive to put the ball in play over a shot at a dinger.
It’s harder to hit balls from a higher mound, both because of velocity and angles. Obviously it is also easier to hit a ball thrown from a further distance.
For years I’ve been thinking that deadening the ball (say, by winding the yarn more loosely) is the best remedy. As an added benefit, the ball becomes less of a deadly missile to pitchers and fans.
To quote Mike Marshall from Ball Four! ” When you lower the mound you are shortening the hypotenuse. ” Which means the the distance the ball travels will.be less. Pythagorean theorem…
Good point. Also I am thrilled to see “Pythagorean” used in proper context, perhaps for the first time, on a baseball stat site.
Great article!
I got the sense this was happening when I perused the free agent list in my 10-team mixer. Sort by “preseason ADP” and everyone on the first page is below the Mendoza line.
So am I supposed to f’ing hold on f’ing Charlie Blackmon (.148/.278/.262) in said shallow mixer, and if so, for how f’ing long???
You could trade him straight up for someone off to a hot start like Cedric Mullins or Corey Dickerson.
Non pitcher batting average was .245 in 1968. With a lowered mound & expansion in 1969 it climbed to .257.
From there it took essentially thirty years to climb to its peak of .275 in 1999/2000. It then took another twenty years to fall back down to .256 in 2019. These are gradual changes over long periods of time.
That same rate of change that previously took decades has now happened in essentially two years.
Might be time to lower the mound again?
I think your argument says differently. Let’s allow things to stabilize before making more adjustments. No rule or hall changes for five years, then analyze and make adjustments.
What makes you think things might stabilize and if they do stabilize at a level in which there are 5,000 more strikeouts than hits in every season, is that acceptable? I don’t think that is acceptable for even one season. If this season continues on its desultory path then baseball can’t wait 5 minutes, much less 5 years, to do something. The stadiums won’t have to worry about social distancing and the percentage of seats they can sell because the game will be gradually wasting away.
That is the least that needs to be done but I doubt if anybody knows whether a lower mound will slow down the fastball of today’s pitchers. If the heat is coming in over
95 mph the large majority of hitters will struggle to react in time to hit the ball. It is obvious that a good percentage of hitters are guessing fastball to give themselves a chance to catch up which is resulting in a startling number of some of the ugliest swings ever seen. Everything has to be studied before this explosion of K’s gets any worse.
The substance experiment in The Athletic showed that a lot of the insane movement might be controlled by strictly limiting folks to sunscreen and rosin.
I don’t know, if Rob Arthur’s work suggests we’re playing with the second liveliest ball in history and BABIP is down and we’re hitting .230 with a sub-.400 slugging percentage that would suggest Rob Arthur’s work is wrong.
I know there are a bunch of changes going on at the same time but there is only one change that happened so suddenly that we can pinpoint the exact moment it happened. That moment is that the ball changed. They said they were going to deaden the ball. And now BABIP and batting average and slugging percentage are all down, so it looks like they succeeded. This is not hard to explain.
Also, as long as I’m at it, this is why I think that messing with the ball intentionally is generally a bad idea. In the modal outcome, you get something you don’t expect and you suddenly have more problems to solve. But in the worst of all possible worlds, you get exactly what you were going for and you discover it’s even worse than what you had before.
My understanding from Arthur’s research (which you can and should read at BP), is that the ball is livelier than ever but the seams are also higher and causing more drag, so the ball’s in-flight trajectory is not quite as efficient as it has been in recent seasons, and pitchers are benefitting from better spin because of the higher seams as well.
That seems to be very specific definition of the term “livelier”. And if that is what he’s arguing, it does support the idea that the problem is the ball!
his research has found that EV is higher, but distance traveled is decreased. His exact words from the article referenced is “the ball is as live as ever”.
It is both alive and dead. It is Schrodinger’s Baseball.
this Shrodinger’s Baseball could become a real epistemological problem when MLB is pulling out game balls to analyze them in detail. Will they then cease to be in the dual state?
Agreed. The only true outcome they are addressing by messing with the ball is home runs.
The problem is the gas. There are simply too many guys who throw to much of it. Contact is hard. All the screwing around with the ball or bemoaning the shift isn’t going to help batters make better contact. If MLB wants more contact, they have to figure out how to makes pitches slower. Or, at least look slower or be more identifiable. Lowering the mound, moving back the mound, doing something to the appearance of the ball to help batters recognize spin and velocity…things like that.
Pitchers are throwing harder and batters aren’t seeing the ball any quicker. I can see that. Training can do more to improve pitching speed than it can to improve hand eye coordination, so we have an imbalance that a rule change can’t easily fix. Though forcing pitchers to pitch deeper by limiting bullpen size might help. I’d rather they try that before moving the mound back or down.
I looked at league stats the other day, and weirdly, one of the only noticeable differences since 2002, aside from the increases in K% and HR/FB, is that Hard Hit% is significantly higher, while soft hit% is flat. Not sure how reliable that data is, but it leads me to believe that it’s simultaneously true that batters are better at getting barrels when they make contact, but pitchers are also getting better at missing bats. Or maybe the increase in Hard Hit% is primarily a function of velocity? And greater pitched ball velocities have a necessarily (newtonian?) corresponding increase in batted ball exit velocities? So the solution to both K’s and HR’s somehow lies in lower pitched ball velocities?
The one foot back might be…ya know
Yeah, Arthur’s work looks good, but, you’re right, the data suggests his conclusions should be questioned. There are many factors in play here, so I won’t say he’s wrong, but it is worth questioning.
if mikejunt is correct up above, then the work is potentially fine but the term “livelier ball” is a much more technical term and a bit misleading as used in the present article. I can’t evaluate for myself so I should probably stop critiquing him specifically.
Either way, the answer is the ball. They said they were going to deaden the ball, they did it, and offense is down. It’s the ball!
If you really, really wanted to reduce home runs and strikeouts and increase action, you wouldn’t mess with the ball like they did. You would require that everyone move the fences back so that the outfield was as big as the one in Kansas City*. BABIP would skyrocket, home runs would decrease, and you’d put all kind of speedy guys on the field to both maximize grinding out extra bases and covering more ground on defense. The importance of contact would increase. The likelihood of putting the ball over the wall would decrease. There would be more triples and inside the park home runs.
This is by far the best solution to the so-called problem of three-true outcome baseball but the league probably doesn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. So instead they keep throwing things out that don’t work and make things worse.
*at least, where it wouldn’t be literally in the street like at Fenway, but Fenway is sort of a good version of what we’re going for anyway
I agree with this too. Bigger outfields solve plenty of problems
The problem isn’t the outfield. Bigger outfields only helps pitchers when the pitchers are the problem. They’re throwing harder than ever, striking out more batters than ever, and it’s killing hitters. Hitters aren’t able to make contact as much so they sell out for as much power as they can to make the most with the contact they do make.
The only solution is to lower the mound or move it back slightly.
deeper fences turns some HRs into doubles and triples. Those are playable balls and “more fun”
A few of those potential HR’s would become doubles and triples but a lot more would just become OUTS!! Averages would drop some more and so would scoring.
If that’s what everyone cares about, then they should just shrink the strike zone slightly. Boom. Fewer strikeouts. And you don’t have to worry about three months of wild pitches either, or changing the mounds in every baseball field across the country. And you’d change the incentives for swinging.
For balls in play, though, moving the fences back is the optimal solution. And as a bonus, players will see more benefit to putting balls in play.
yes, i too think that the cleanest way to address these issues, and the way that most adheres to the history of rule changes in the sport, are changes to the zone and changes to outfield dimensions. Plus you’d likely get differently skilled players if you can’t reliably have weak gloved players faking it in the corner outfield spots in parks with more ground to cover.
What about moving the mound back a little? Drag on the ball means velocity is a little lower when it crosses the plate and the extra distance gives hitters more time to react. Would that neutralize velocity a little?
Or would it just lead to more homeruns and fewer strikeouts without changing balls in play much? It might also chase out older guys who had lost their elite velocity, or make soft tossers obsolete in general. Like you said it is easy to have outcomes that are unexpected and create more problems than you solve.
The problem with every “solution” is that MLB doesn’t seem to have the faintest clue that if they get what they want they’re going to regret it. You want more offense? That means more home runs and more TTO baseball. You want more action instead? That makes the game longer. You want the game shorter? That means fewer hits and shorter innings. You want shorter innings but fewer home runs? Congratulations, you have less offense.
At least with my solution, I’m aware that there are going to be longer innings and so the game is going to be longer. But I got everything else I came for with it. In constrast, the commissioners office seems oblivious to the fact that they don’t want what they say they want.
I don’t think “more action” *does* “make the game longer.”
Incentivizing balls in play, on both sides, means a lot more 2 or 3 pitch at-bats.
7 pitch at bats are fun when they’re the exception, not the rule.
As for the specific proposal though…I think the most likely scenario is that there would be a huge increase in walks and wild pitches. That would be fun for a weekend and then not so much.
One very big problem with changing the mound is that it means every other mound in every other MiLB, independent, college, and high school stadium will also have to change.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. It just means there are lots of other things they’re going to try first.
This is a good point- changing something like the mound height or distance would require a fundamental change to the way baseball is played everywhere, and we don’t know what kind of unseen effects sweeping changes like that might have. You might see something like a sharp rise in teenage arm injuries if you move the mound back because kids are now trying to throw harder, et cetera et cetera. I’ve been thinking about that since Alex Wood went off on on Twitter about all the new rule changes being implemented in the Atlantic League, not for “threatening the sanctity of the game” or anything like that but because that league is full of guys trying to make it back to affiliated ball and all those changes will make it impossible for teams to evaluate them because they’ll essentially be playing a different game.
Think too of how much harder it will be to have pitchers cross over from foreign leagues. If you didn’t do this in concert with the KBO and NPB, then you’d see a lot of missed opportunities getting in wonderful pitching talent from those leagues (like Shohei the pitcher!) or even allowing players like Miles Mikolas to find meaningful and productive alternatives to Minor League ball.
It’s a separate issue from pace of play concerns, but I think opening up greater avenues for players to cross over between american and international leagues would do wonderful things for the sport. Baseball is WAY more international than I think a lot of people give it credit for. And it’s a real shame that Japanese players have high, anti-competitive hurdles to clear when wanting to come to the US. (and of course it’s a real humanitarian concern when folks risk their lives to flee Cuba, or are stuck in a really problematic Venezuela).
In the US, the NBA has really hit its stride embracing international talent. And European football is made all the more colorful by the constellation of national leagues that innovate and cross-breed different ways of playing the game. I think MLB can lean into its international culture even harder.
I didn’t see it in the article, but is BABIP depressed on both ground balls and fly balls? Maybe it doesn’t really matter. When it comes right down to it, I’d much rather move the fences back to increase BABIP than ban the shift.
It’s always fun when Yankees fans talk about how Fenway is a bandbox or that Fenway Left is the same as NuYankee Right. A 40-ft fence in NuYankee Right would do wonders for balls in play. And Fenway Right is very deep and large. The place actually suppresses homers, but provides a paradise for doubles thanks to the big outfields and the wall.
I love Fenway park. The dimensions are just right to make for an exciting game, the atmosphere is intense, and it’s easy to see the action. It’s probably my favorite stadium now that they took out the fountains at Kaufman (I haven’t been since they took it out but I want to punish them for it). Coors is probably third. And then Dodger Stadium and Camden Yards (although Camden Yards is too homer-friendly for my tastes).
I have not been to PNC in Pitt or the ballpark in SF but maybe someday when the pandemic is more or less over I’ll go. Those are the big ones for me.
So what I’m hearing is that every stadium should erect at least one 40-ft wall in the outfield?
I’m in
The Trop’s take on it could be to have a giant Plexiglas panel suspended horizontally, 40 feet above the field, forcing fielders to play the ricochet on any ball with that much elevation! Better react fast on a pop-up!
Wouldn’t adding a few more teams to MLB help out on this front? I believe that this is the longest period ever with no expansion. The us population in 1998 (last expansion) was about 276 million, now it about 332 million. That’s a lot more folks that could be watching a new team or three.
There we go- yes! Put a team in Charlotte, give Texas another team. Put another team in NYC.
Charlotte yes, NYC and Texas absolutely not. Adding a third team to places that already have two is silly. Montreal, Portland, Nashville, and Nee Orleans all make more sense, and it’d be worth moving the Rays to one of those places too.
It’s hard to say. You’d be adding MLB jobs for both weaker hitters and weaker pitchers, so there’s no real way to predict what the overall outcome of that would be on various league averages.
This was an excellent article. If I hadn’t watched games, I would say the league average is entirely too low, but the season has been great so far. I see no reason to change things. (Other than the 7 inning games. That rule can die a quick and horrible death).
Has fWAR been adjusted to account for the decreasing importance of defense?
I’m pretty sure in a recent chat it was said that they are discussing it, but haven’t actually changed anything yet
Great piece.
There’s a real risk that this can get really boring after a while. Baseball can’t be like hockey or soccer, inherently low-scoring, because it lacks goal-line to goal-line action. We need more things to watch than swings and misses and trudges to first base. My (partial) solution probably wouldn’t be popular…dump the three batter rule, but cap the pitching staff at something closer to 10, carrying an additional pitcher for extras or a double header.
Maybe I’m showing how little I know about soccer and ice soccer, but a low scoring baseball game is still full of great at bats and great defensive plays and there’s a chance to score a run with one swing of the bat. The game is still exciting even when runs aren’t scored. Unlike those lesser sports.
“Maybe I’m showing how little I know.” Ftfy 🙂 -sincerely, an ice soccer lifer.
I think the point is that in baseball, the average time between batters within an inning is 54 seconds. At absolute minimum that repeats 35 times in a game. That’s a significant portion of time when nothing can happen.
Additionally, after every defensive stop, there’s a two minute changeover, that repeats at least 16 times. More than double the 15-minute halftime in soccer. Compared to hockey it’s about similar, but then in hockey a defensive stop can immediately transition within seconds into an offensive attack.
I think the rhythm of the game is just different. I love live hockey. It’s like watching Mad Max: just non-stop thrilling quick action. And it’s great.
I think baseball is a bit more like a Hitchcock thriller. Lots of suspense and anticipation, with a high volume of short spurts of emotion on each pitch (and awe at what pitchers are able to do with a baseball). Baseball breathes, you can calm down and re-set between batters. Maybe it’s not great solo TV, but it’s great if you’re in the stands and you want to talk to your buddy or a neighboring rando.
What MLB won’t often talk about is how there’s a lot of artificial slowness baked in. When I played high school ball, we sprinted out onto the field between half innings. You can’t do that in the MLB because they’re selling you 45 minutes of commercials each game. Apparently in 1954, there was just as much “live ball action” in each game as there is today, but they only had 9 minutes of commercials!
Soccer and hockey benefit from having a ruleset that prevents commercial interruptions.
And in the era of netflix and VOD and cellphones, and an audience (of many ages, not just millennials and GenZ!) that has grown accustomed to consuming ad-free entertainment, 45 minutes of commercials is the real dinosaur in the equation. Soccer broadcasts are 2 hours long. 3 hour 15 minute ball games would become more palatable 2.5 hour games if you removed those commercials. (how to fix this without breaking the economics of the game, i don’t know!)
*I was coincidentally asking myself all these questions yesterday and my googling turned up this blog post which I used as my “evidence”. So I am no expert and just hoping, in good faith, that this data is accurate: http://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?p=475
I just realized the actual inning break depends on the broadcast: “The time between innings and pitching changes is 2 minutes, 5 seconds for local broadcasts, 2 minutes, 25 seconds for nationally televised games and 2 minutes, 55 seconds for tiebreaker and postseason games.”
https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/warmup-pitches
You could take 7 minutes off every national game and 15.5 minutes off playoff games just by setting it at 2 minutes flat.
I think they’d be fine with the 7th inning stretch and a break after 3 complete but hold every other inning change without a pitching change to 55 seconds. It’d knock an easy 15-22 minutes off game time in one swoop
wow, fascinating!
One thing the article I posted also points out is that the Euro football half time actually has a “show” element to it, with analysis and commentary and highlights, similar to what you’d get in an NBA halftime. So their break is also not all ads.
Also, having just one long break in a game is so much easier to manage than multiple short breaks. It ain’t easy to do much of anything, including using the restroom, in under 2.5 minutes (at least not hygienically).
But with one long halftime show, you can do all sorts of things. You could make fresh guacamole for the second half of the broadcast. Make instant noodles. Run a lap around the block. take a shower. play a video game with a friend.
The average soccer game features 2.6-2.75 goals in 1:45 or 1.46- 1.57 goals/hr.
The average MLB game features 4.85 runs in 3:05 or about 1.57 runs/hr.
The average NFL game features 45.6 points, which is the equivalent of 6.5 touchdowns in 3:12 or about 2.03 scores/hr.
The average NHL game features 5.96 goals in about 2:20 or about 2.55 goals/hr.
I’m not sure it makes sense to call hockey inherently low-scoring.
You forgot to count both teams’ runs in MLB games. 4.85 runs/game is only about what one team scores per game, while those other numbers are clearly referring to what both teams score per game.
Also, you forgot to adjust the football score averages to account for field goals and safties.
I’ve noticed this trend leak into amateur baseball- High schoolers with lots of power but no patience and lots of strikeouts, pitchers with lots of velocity but no command or ability to confuse hitters- things that make the sport just a game of Ctrl C + Ctrl V
The latter is how high school pitchers have been since time immemorial. Far and away the best way to get noticed by college coaches/scouts is by throwing hard. Nobody gets drafted for doing a high school impression of Greg Maddux, and it’s irrelevant in any case bc a still-growing body makes maintaining your mechanics (and the associated command & consistency) extremely difficult.
I have recognized this since the beginning of the year and have done some homework. On Sunday April 18th in the 14 games that were played in the afternoon the stats were 161 hits in 875 AB’s for a batting average of .184. There were 241 K’s against 57 BB’s to “raise” the OBP to a scary .234. and 23 HR’s were hit. This past Sunday, in all 16 games, the numbers improved(??) slightly to 210/935 for a still very low .225. K’s again exceeded hits by a 266/210 margin and the OBP inched up to .289. A couple of more tidbits that should wake up the Lords of Baseball. This one amazes me. In all games played on Sunday every starting lineup included at least one player hitting below the Mendoza line. How bad were the Yankees? Ten players made plate appearances in the game and six were below the Mendoza Line and only one, Urshela, was hitting an even .250. The grand total of starting position players below .200 was 58 with a few even under .100. At this point in the season the number of K’s exceeds the number of hits by an astonishing 969. In the last full season, 2019, that number was only 784 for the entire year. 6,000 more K’s than hits this year!? Is that number even conceivable? I am afraid it is and baseball better recognize this sooner rather than later.
Everyone is floating their pet solutions in this thread. I am of the mind that the fundamental problem is that pitchers are too far ahead of hitters in today’s game, so you’ve got to do something to change that. Lowering the mound or moving the mound back could work, although I think the effects are hard to predict.
My personal preference is to get rid of the current pitching regime in which you ask 5 or 6 pitchers to cover 9 innings, all of them throwing as hard as they possibly can. It seems like every other reliever these days is a guy who can’t throw the ball over the plate and gives out tons of free passes but racks up tons of strikeouts anyway. Command is a vanishing art, especially in the bullpen. (Although I’ll acknowledge I only watch the Braves and that they have had two especially bad years in this regard recently, so my perspective is skewed.) So yeah, limit the number of pitchers on the roster, or even more extremely, cap the total number of pitchers in a game. Force the teams to stop doing this thing that is effective but is killing the game’s rhythm and watchability.
I agree that pitchers are too far ahead of hitters. Just look at K rates over the last 10 or 20 years. Pitchers have progressed far too quickly and something needs to be done. I believe that lowering the mound or moving it back slightly is the best option.
While I like the idea of capping pitchers on a team, I worry that it will just force too many innings on receivers and cause more injuries. Arm injuries is already a major problem and limiting the amount of arms on a team could make it even worse.
I think you’re right that it might lead to arm injuries. Not to be too callous, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. If today’s pitchers are throwing in a style that’s not sustainable for more than 70 IP over the course of a season, and it’s resulted in the current style of baseball, maybe we need to discourage that by forcing teams to rely on pitchers who have more than raw arm strength going for them.
I like the Double Hook rule they’re trying in the Atlantic League – tie the DH to the starter, and you’ll get longer starts (which means more “pitching to contact”) and the need for Matt Stairs guys, which will limit the number of relievers on a roster.
Baseball is hard to watch these days. I’m 24 years old and a baseball fanatic and love following the games, but in my friend groups I’m the odd ball baseball fan. Sure, the analytics are fun to track. However, the current product makes it almost impossible to attract the casual fan.
I wonder how much of it is baseball itself and how much of it is the outcome of a fracturing pop culture media market. Obviously this is seen most clearly in music and tv where the advent of streaming and time-shifted viewing, plus the proliferation of alternatives, means less of a water cooler common culture.
I may be a weirdo, but I actually can’t stand to watch TV — I get too distracted and I’d much rather play a video game than watch a TV show or watch a regular season sport event. But playoff baseball, for me, is appointment viewing. And in the pre-2020 days I’d be in cinemas multiple times a week (or at a ballpark, when I used to be a season ticket holder! because I love live regular season baseball) so TV just held such little import in my life. My day-to-day engagement with baseball is via youtube clips, podcasts, gifs, and great baseball writing like here at Fangraphs where I’d rather spend hours of my life than sitting watching commercial-laden ballgames (not to mention that I can’t even watch regular season games because I don’t value TV enough to spend tons of money on cable). I specifically love baseball because of the high quality analytical nature and prevalence of great writing on the sport (and I grew up playing and loving the game) and really care not for the tv-version of the game. And honestly, I’m having a blast “watching” and thinking about baseball this way. I’m obsessed, even. MLB just has to figure out how to monetize that, I guess?
Meanwhile, Mike Trout is batting .426 and wondering what all the fuss is about. Of course, Mike Trout isn’t human, he’s clearly a T-800 sent from the future to terminate flying round objects….
As the disappearance of the base hit has become more apparent there is beginning to be a discussion of what needs to be done to return some semblance of balance between pitching and hitting to the game. It is also apparent that there is very little support for the only thing that might help that return to balance and that is reducing the effect that the dramatic increase in velocity that, while building for some time, has quite suddenly, exploded everywhere. There is very little that can be done to assist the hitters if the status quo continues. It looks like the bell curve for the talent needed to react to a fastball thrown in excess of 95mph is almost at the flat line end of that curve. What are the changes available? Shrinking the zone will not lessen velocity, will increase BB’s, lengthen the game and is a non-starter. Deadening the ball doesn’t slow it down when it leaves the pitcher’s hand so that doesn’t get a second thought. The only reasonable ideas revolve around making it harder to pitch. What are they? The simplest is lowering the mound. This was done in 1969, after the collapse of hitting. The following year averages went up but immediately began dropping and, by 1972, the overall average was plummeting back to .244. This needs to be tried but I am skeptical that it will cause the necessary drop in the effectiveness of high heat. Moving the mound back is controversial and it has to be studied extensively. It is also clear that there is a great deal of resistance in doing that. How strong is that resistance? In 2019 it was announced that The Atlantic League was going to use electronic balls and strikes and, during the second half of the season, experiment with a 62′ distance between the rubber and the plate. That never happened, the pitchers revolted, and two years of knowledge has been wasted. Pitchers would be forced to make adjustments. Would batters be able to react more efficiently with more time to see the ball? Would extra movement offset that advantage to the hitter? I think if the hitter could recognize the break better, even if the ball moved more, he would have a better chance of making contact. The one that is most logical because it seems to be supported by The Laws of Physics would be to alter the ball in a way that would affect velocity of the pitch and the carry of the ball. This could be accomplished by changing the size, the height of the seems and/or the weight of the ball. It was tried this year but the game got it wrong. They did nothing to slow down velocity, appear to have made the ball move more and cut the HR rate down. The result is a .232/.310/.390 slash line. Once hits exceed K’s again, let us hope, then the balance between hits and HR’s can be ironed out but the goal has to be getting hits and K’s in some sort of balance.
Limit pitchers to under 6 feet and less than 180 lbs.
Wouldn’t stop Pedro!
The game has always changed and this is what will happen to the TTO.
At a certain point in the future contact hitters will be a market inefficiency and a small market team will build a very good team around this market inefficiency.
Other teams will follow and a decade later sluggers will be a market inefficiency….
As a Blue Jays fan, I think it’s just Danny Janssen. He’s like 2-for-185 this year…take him out and the league batting average jumps to .253.
Sorry about Danny Janssen everyone.
To be fair, there are a handful of players who really need to work out their problems in the minors rather than the alternate site (Jansen, Keston Hiura, and Amed Rosario are the worst offenders). But unless they have negative numbers of hits I’m pretty sure that’s not it.
I am starting to get on board with capping the number of pitchers you can have on your roster. I also don’t think it will increase injuries as injuries have been increasing to pitcher regardless of what you do. If starters have to throw an extra inning and some relievers have to go 2 innings more often, I do think you would see some decreased velocity.
I am also getting on board with limiting shifts. Figure out an area that each position can occupy and that’s it.
National League DH would help a little as well.
Do current roster rules make any distinction between player positions? Just wondering if limiting the number of pitchers would first require formally defining player positions on the roster. If so, I’m against introducing this kind of micro-managing, as it becomes a slippery slope toward ‘ineligible receiver downfield’.
Roster rules began making distinctions for pitchers last season, limiting 13 of the 26 roster spots to be used on pitchers unless someone has enough playing time to qualify as a “two-way player” (read: Ohtani). Players who don’t have the pitcher designation are not allowed to take the mound anymore except in blowouts or extra innings, and players who do have it don’t get to go on the 10-day IL; rather their minimum stay there is hiked back to the old 15 days.
actually, the NL not having a DH is a boon to limiting the number of pitchers a team has, without trying to find some game-able arbitrary limit on the number of pitchers, since the squads have to carry ample pinch hitters for the game. So, actually, pitchers batting is only occurring like 2 times for your 9-hole slot unless you have an ace going deeper or have a successful offensive day. Which, honestly, doesn’t seem as bad as seeing Rougned Odor batting 4th for NYY haha. Plus you get a lot of different players looks when they pinch hit or double switch, which I think can be fun.
I personally love that we have two flavors of baseball in the MLB and in the NPB.
I hate the way the game is evolving.
Limit staffs to 13 pitchers? I say limit them to 11. That would result in more innings pitched and lower velocity. To counteract the probable increase in HRs move the fences back 10-20 feet.
Moving fences back only makes it easier for pitchers to go searching for Ks with high fastballs. They make a mistake, and it is a harmless fly instead of a run and likely lowers BABIP.
Pitchers throwing hard and throwing more secondary pitches is the primary cause of TTO. Deadening ball, making ball livelier isn’t going to make contact hitters good. Myles Straw and Astudillo won’t become great offenses forces just because Bregman and Cruz are hitting fewer homers.
Depends how far you move it back. You have to make it big enough so that stuff falls in the gaps more often. More than likely what happens is you get fewer big, lumbering sluggers in the outfield, which would be all kinds of fun for a bunch of reasons.
If teams are going to insist on usually pulling their starters after around 100 pitches, then you need at least 7 relievers (and therefore at least 12 total pitchers) just to cover the needed innings without overusing your relievers.
I am wondering if this new ball is going to come out to be a bigger culprit than initial reports suggest. If everyone is throwing harder, then the changed ball may have something to do with that; maybe the raised seams allow for better grip? And I hear all of the talk about increased drag if the seams are raised, but that may be negligible when pitching, but greatly felt when the ball is hit off the bat and getting dragged down in the form of fly balls?
It’s not quite that every team is suffering. It seems more that, at least so far, those at the top of the team batting averages (BOS, LAA, CHW, HOU) have relatively normal BAs for the cream of the team-BA crop by the standards of a decade ago, ranging from .274 to .260, which is pretty consistent with the range in the top 10 teams from 2010-2013ish.
The falloff between #4 and #5 is 13 points: .260 to .247. It progresses downwards in much smaller increments from there. You can see a similar trend with OBP; the top three OBP teams (LAD, CHW, BOS) this year are actually all outperforming the team leader in 2012 (STL, .338). The drop-off between 3 and 4 is 11 points, like the BA drop-off.
This might just be early-season noise and all, but this is an interesting note.
I say remove the draft and any sort of incentive for tanking your team. Fix the system where great young talent is manipulated into playing in the minors. And dismantle the propaganda that defends “small market” teams for not putting competitive teams on the field. In what universe does Miami, the 7th or 10th most populous metro area in the US by some counts, have any excuse for trotting out underfunded squads?
(admittedly, these are all pipe dreams :-))
But then it would be too hard for bad teams to improve if they didn’t have the draft advantage. That would be a net downside compared to the advantage of disincentivizing tanking.
Fixing that problem is a lot easier said than done, as teams will still manipulate the deadline no matter when it’s placed, and you can’t just order teams to call up top prospects before the deadline on such a subjective argument as to whether they’re ready for the Majors yet.
Miami and Tampa are underfunded, because they can’t draw well when the people with the most money don’t live there during most of baseball season. It was a mistake to expand to the Snowbird State in the first place. Unfortunately, the Marlins are stuck there for the foreseeable future, but hopefully the Rays can move out before too long…
The reason HR’s and K’s dominate the game is because there is no choice. The most efficient way to score is to sit back and have a player hit a HR. The only way for that to change is have another alternative for efficient scoring. That can only be done if batting averages return to the .260’s as it was from the late 70’s and the 80’s in the AL and would have been in the NL without pitchers hitting, which is coming. If that could be accomplished then hits could be strung together and the present TTO style of play could be challenged. At that point the ball could be deadened and the power hitters would be the true sluggers, Judge, Stanton, Trout and not every will of the wisp middle infielder. 1979 is a good example. The AL, with the DH hit .270, averaged 4.67 runs/game while hitting under 150 HR’/team. The NL hit .261 with pitchers swinging. These numbers are the balance the game should strive for.
Might be worth looking at how many 4-week stretches in history have seen BA this low. I suspect this month is not the worst out of the last 50 years.
Haven’t heard this talked about – one of the pro’s of an electronic strike zone is it would enable you
to easily make precise, fine adjustments to the scoring environment (potentially in the middle of a season if you wanted). Is scoring too low? Move the bottom of the zone up 1/8 of an inch! Still too low? Move the top the zone down 1/4 of an inch! Don’t like it? Change it back! Even intra-season changes like this would be less noticeable than an Angel Hernandez zone meandering throughout a game. By no means a cure-all solution, but it could help.
From as aesthetics perspective, I actually kind of miss the days when umps weren’t graded on how well they adhered to Statcast’s strikezone. I felt it led to a more interesting interplay between pitcher and umpire. The strikezone become purely the ump’s, and thus command pitchers (and catchers who could frame well) were more valuable. This is probably even partially responsible for the rise in TTO, because velocity has become more valued compared to command.
Just my opinion…
It sounds good in theory, but the technology still isn’t accurate enough to implement yet.
If anything, MLB should’ve juiced the ball more. I don’t know anyone IRL who was complaining about too many HR’s. There are still star hitters who are making it look easy, but the median hitter just looks overmatched in 2021 as pitching/defense turns into more of a science where you can get repeatable results.
1) the strike zone has changed (tech feedback for umps)
2) hitters have learned not to swing as much (analytics)
3) pitchers have learned to throw more non-FB (analytics)
4) run scoring hasn’t changed much (more HR)
Move fences back (Coors/AT&T) and get more singles falling in, fewer HR, more gappers AND deaden ball (humidor) and game will change organically
Keep the improved, legitimate strike zone (it IS in rule book and we don’t need subjective zones)
Keep mound height same (lower mound = flatter FB up in zone which is HARDER to hit)
Excellent piece. Learned a lot.
The overall thesis seems right, but last year the league’s average in July (the first month of the season) was .233. BABIP was .279. Maybe you expect it to be lower because of how unusual last year was, but I kind of doubt it stays this low all year as the weather (and the players) warm up.
This feels out of left field compared to the other ideas put out, but what about finally instituting the pitch clock? If you give pitchers 20 seconds instead of 30 to choose precisely which pitch they want to throw and get themselves perfectly ready to throw it, maybe they will find it harder to throw an unhittable pitch every time. If it doesn’t create more action, at least it will decrease the amount of time between actions.