One of the biggest stories in Major League Baseball this season is the dominance of pitchers over hitters. Through yesterday's games, MLB hitters have combined to slash .236/.312/.395. This is the kind of offense you might expect from a slick-fielding utility man. The average runs per game for all teams is 4.37. Teams have struck out an average of 8.95 times per game. The numbers are worse for the New York Mets. Mets hitters have slashed .233/.312/.364 over 51 games, though they are striking out a teensy bit less often than the MLB average, about 8.6 times per game.
To put this in perspective, I went back a decade earlier to 2011. The average slash line for the league was .255/.321/.399. The average number of runs per game was actually a bit lower at 4.28. But they struck out about 7.1 times per game.
If you go back a decade further to 2001 — in the heart of the steroid era — teams slashed a combined .264/.332/.427. Teams averaged 4.78 runs and struck out about 6.7 times a game.
Now we'll take a long jump in the Wayback Machine back to 1971. Pitchers dominated the game in those days. The average number of runs per team was 3.89. Despite that, the average line of .249/.317/.365 was better than present-day batters are slashing. And teams struck out an average of only 5.4 times per game.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred saw a problem with the way the game was trending. Baseball had become a game of strikeouts, walks, and home runs. People have been complaining about how boring these games had become for years. Worst of all, the playoffs — baseball's biggest money-maker — had become hard to watch as minutes dragged by without balls being put in play.
The answer Rob and his crew came up with was to make changes to the baseball that would suppress home runs. Sheer genius, I know. And sure, that slightly increased the number of balls in play. Some balls that were home runs in 2020 are flyouts this year. However, more flyouts and fewer home runs didn't make the game less boring. As anyone other than Rob and his crack crew of advisors would have guessed, it made the game more boring. As a bonus, a side effect of the lighter core of the new baseball was making the ball spin more, which leads to more strikeouts.
To be fair, I'm sure some of these suppressed home runs wind up as doubles. I guess some would argue that a double is more exciting than a home run. I wouldn't, personally, but I'm sure there are fans of two-baggers out there who are happy. Me, I love home runs. My problem is with all of the strikeouts and the suppressed offense in general.
Six pitchers have already tossed no-hitters in 2021, and that's not even counting a 7-inning gem tossed by Madison Bumgarner in the second game of a doubleheader against the Atlanta Braves on April 25. This was after Zac Gallen allowed the Braves a single hit in the first game. Now that's suppressed offense.
It's obvious to any baseball fan that most Major League hitters swing for the fences in today's game. A reason often given is that the dominance of pitchers has made it harder to string hits together, so the home run is the best weapon to put runs on the board. While this has some merit, most hitters utilize a slight uppercut in their swing and swing for the fences, even with two strikes. This has contributed to the cartoonishly high strikeout totals.
The majority of pitchers combat the launch-angle approach with fastballs up in the zone, a weakness for these uppercutting hitters. Because there is such a large percentage of these hitters in the game this year, pitchers can combat most of any team's lineup with the same exact same approach. To that extent, at least, hitters are making it easier for pitchers. Pitchers who can throw a rising 4-seam fastball up and combine it with a down-breaking slider have a reasonable chance of striking out most MLB hitters, as long as they can execute.
The biggest reason baseball has evolved this way is the value analytics place on getting on base and hitting for power. And no, this isn't an attack on the usefulness of analytics. A batter who hits for power and gets on base is more valuable than a singles hitter who rarely walks. That's the point of the OBP stat.
For instance, 2B Felix Millan was an important player on the Mets from 1973-1977. He was a personal favorite of young me. Millan was one of the few notoriously light-hitting Mets who could put up a decent batting average. He would draw a few walks, but he wasn't particularly patient and didn't hit with much power.
His first year with the Mets was 1973, the famous "Ya gotta believe" season. Millan hit a very respectable .290 that year, but his OPS was only .685, and his OPS+ was below league-average at 92. The only time Millan had an OPS+ over 100 was 1976, his second-to-last season with the Mets. His batting average and slugging percentage were a bit lower than 1973, but he drew more walks. His OBP of .341 was the highest in his career.
When I was a kid, the batting average stat was still all-important. I would scoff at the idea that John Milner, who batted only .239 on the season, was a vastly more valuable offensive contributor than Millan and his .290 average. Milner drew a good number of walks and hit for power, and his OPS of .762 was 77 points higher than Millan's. If I gave "The Hammer" the nod over Millan at all, it was Milner's 23 HR and 73 RBIs — compared to Millan's 3 HR and 37RBIs — that I would have thought made the difference. Counting stats were really all that I cared about beyond batting average.
Of course, Milner's power advantage came at a price. Milner struck out 84 times in 519 PA, Millan — who choked up on the bat in a way you don't even see anymore — only struck out 22 times in 699 PA. Yet, with what we know today, Milner was still a vastly better offensive contributor than Millan. You don't see many, if any, like Millan today. But there are plenty of power hitters who accumulate tons of strikeouts.
The point to all of this is that the power hitter is still king in baseball. He probably will be for the rest of my lifetime. And, as much as it would cut down on strikeout numbers, we don't want a roster full of Felix Millans on our ballclub. Those soft groundouts really aren't all that much more exciting than a strikeout. We're not going to see a hitter sacrifice bunt successfully 18 times, as Millan did in 1973. Ralph Kiner's old line about power hitters driving Cadillacs while single hitters drive Fords still has meaning today.
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