ARLINGTON, Texas — Major League Baseball can’t run away from its lack of runs.
Batting averages are near half-century lows. Pitching velocity is at an all-time high.
“Run scoring, it’s not easy to do. It’s hard, and it’s getting harder,” said Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, who played parts of seven seasons in the majors from 2003 to 2010. “Pitchers are getting better by the outing.”
The MLB batting average for the 2024 season was .240 through April and .239 in May, the lowest since the bottom of .237 in 1968’s year of the pitcher. It has risen slightly along with the temperature as spring turned to summer: .246 in June and .250 in July, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Still, the average of .243 heading into the midseason break for the MLB All-Star Game was just ahead of 2022 and 1968 as the lowest since the dead-ball era ended in 1920.
“Batting average was down a little bit. That’s not necessarily a good thing if you’re looking for action in the game,” commissioner Rob Manfred said in late May.
And the drop isn’t just in the big leagues. This year’s minor league batting average is .243, down from .256 in 2019.
“I didn’t see 100 (mph) when I was playing. It’s commonplace now,” said Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, an outfielder in the majors from 1999 to 2008
Average four-seam fastball velocity is 94.2 mph this year, matching 2023 and up from 91.1 mph in 2008. There were 3,880 pitches of 100 mph or higher last year, up from 214 in 2008.
Just at Triple-A this year there have been 461.
“You can tell as a hitter, guys are going to the top with the fastballs,” said outfielder Dylan Crews, the No. 2 draft pick of the Washington Nationals last year who is now with the Triple-A Rochester (New York) Red Wings.
AP photo by Terrance Williams / The Baltimore Orioles’ Ryan Mountcastle reacts after striking out against New York Yankees pitcher Luis Gil last Saturday.In an age of shortened attention spans, MLB has tried to increase action by instituting limits on defensive shifts in 2023 along with a pitch clock to cut dead time. The average time of a nine-inning game dropped from 3 hours, 4 minutes in 2022 to 2:40 last year and to 2:36 thus far this season, but runs remain near the lows that followed the steroid era: 4.39 per team each game, down from 4.62 last year and up from 4.28 in 2022.
Still, hitters have cut down slightly on strikeouts: the rate of 8.36 per team per game this season is the lowest since 2017, down from 8.61 last year and a record 8.81 in 2019.
“There’s more spin rate. There’s harder throwers,” San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado said. “There’s just so much information, and I think that’s what creates the havoc and makes hitting a little bit harder.”
The percentage of fastballs (four-seamers, sinkers and cutters) is 55.5% this year, just above last season’s 55.4%. It was 62.5% in 2015. Spin rates on sliders, sweepers and slurves have increased from 2,106 revolutions per minute in 2015 to 2,475 this year, and their use has increased from 10.9% to 22.5%.
Team analysts view video and dissect data to provide pointers to pitchers pointers and blueprints to batters. The Dodgers employ senior directors of baseball systems applications and baseball systems platforms along with directors of baseball strategy and information, quantitative analysis, baseball product development, integrative baseball performance, performance innovation lab and baseball innovation.
As a result of the perpetual perusal, pitchers are told what to throw, when to throw and how to throw.
Atlanta Braves starter Max Fried, a left-hander, mixes seven pitches: four-seamer, sinker, cutter, slider, sweeper, curveball and changeup.
“The information is so prevalent that there are no secrets,” Fried said. “Baseball is still a game of changing speeds and mixing up looks, and if you can just kind of keep guys off balance as much as you possibly can there, you’re going to give yourself the best chance to be successful.”
The New York Yankees built a pitching laboratory known as the “Gas Station” at their minor league complex in Tampa, Florida, ahead of the 2020 season, a type of facility that is now becoming more commonplace. Pitchers from the majors down to high school have gone to Driveline in Kent, Washington, to develop their repertoires. “Pitch shape” has become a common term.
“You could go long periods, months maybe, where teams were not adding new pitches,” Baldelli said. “And now you see almost every series, you run in against a team and someone’s doing something completely different. I think the fear has kind of left the major league clubhouses when it comes to making adjustments.”