Let’s take a step back today and consider an overall shift in the way baseball has been played over the last few decades.
Getting the ball in play is so last century. It leads to all sorts of messy scenarios where fielders touch the ball, the batter now becomes a runner and can goof things up, and you’re really just leaving too many things to chance. Let’s keep things simple: If a batter wins a matchup against a pitcher, they should either hit a home run, or walk. If the pitcher wins, then they get a strikeout. We now have a clean approach to the game, which we call the three true outcomes.
The rate at which these outcomes occur has been steadily on the rise. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the MLB front office was actively ignoring rampant steroid use and we suddenly saw long-standing home run records broken by impossible mounts of men, those executives very much enjoyed profiting off the excitement of the three true outcomes. Well, one of the three. Home runs are thrilling to watch. A single swing of the bat can change the game enormously. But, as it turns out, once pitchers begin to catch onto the approaches of these hitters, another of these three outcomes becomes dominant.
During that decade of about 1995 to 2005, we saw huge home run numbers by some players, and huge strikeout numbers by some pitchers. These were mostly isolated to notable individual achievements. Today, we are not seeing record-breaking individual seasons1I must point out that Aaron Judge did just break the American League record with 62 home runs this season, and is notably the first person to break Roger Maris’s 1961 record of 61 home runs without any accusations of steroid use. in the same way, but we are seeing a change in the offensive landscape on average.
We can look at the average number of balls in play (BIP) per team per game across the season. Between 1986 and 2007, this was pretty much always around 26.5 to 28, with most seasons falling between 27.0 and 27.75. After 2007, we saw more players playing a feast-or-famine game of offense that was being counteracted by pitchers, and the BIP average steadily dropped to an all-time low of 23.13 in 2020.2In 2021, it was 23.67, so we can’t just blame COVID. It wasn’t a sudden change by any means.
Here’s the thing: There is very little correlation between the average number of balls in play and the average number of runs scored per game. Teams were still getting runs across, but doing so with a larger mix of walks and home runs. Again, let’s take the messiness out to get a more predictable set of outcomes.
Yet despite how exciting home runs can be, having balls in play in general keeps fans engaged with the game. If batters are not trying to do that, strikeouts increase because pitchers can exploit the fact that batters are trying to make a specific kind of contact. That’s exactly what happened: despite these theoretic adjustments to approach, there hasn’t been a substantial increase in walk or home run rate across the league. Instead, strikeouts have steadily gone up.
Unless you’re a pitching nerd like me, that’s incredibly boring. As fun as it is to watch your favorite pitcher mow down the opposing team, it’s demoralizing to see it happen to your own team. You get a stream of batters striking out quite frequently, getting some walks and home runs, and fans lose interest because the historically typical action — a ball hit in play, even if they it results in an out — is getting lost.
This has led to a new rule change for the 2023 season. Up until now, the defense could arrange themselves in extreme shifts, placing infielders in very strange spots compared to what you’d see growing up, using data to get them in the most probably location for a batted ball. There will be some limitations set that could reduce the effectiveness of these shifts, letting some otherwise-routine ground ball outs become potential hits.
This does not inherently fix the approach problem of swinging for the fences. The league will need to adjust to these rules and determine if other types of hitters, those reminiscent of the previous century with stronger abilities to make contact, have a higher overall value. I’ll be very interested in this dynamic over the next few seasons.
Ultimately, I’ll be keeping an eye on that BIP statistic and the rate at which three true outcomes occur. We did get a small increase back to 24.41 in 2022, so adjustments are being made to some extent. The MLB wants to change how things are now, because fans are losing interest. We’ll see if the tweaks make a difference.
Continue to Day 6 – Isolated Power
- 1I must point out that Aaron Judge did just break the American League record with 62 home runs this season, and is notably the first person to break Roger Maris’s 1961 record of 61 home runs without any accusations of steroid use.
- 2In 2021, it was 23.67, so we can’t just blame COVID. It wasn’t a sudden change by any means.