This has been debated a bunch in recent years, with no clarity either way. So let's talk about it again!
There's been so much change across the baseball landscape -- from the pitch clock to banning sticky stuff and enlarging the bases, to banning the shift to the explosion in off-speed pitches -- that it's incredibly hard (at least for me) to tease apart what's impacting what. And given that it's May 3rd, an easy explanation here is "Wait for the weather to warm up before drawing conclusions."
Still, here's an article that tries to break it down a bit, comparing the first 750ish games in 2023 to 2024: https://www.si.com/mlb/diamondbacks/offense-is-down-across-mlb-and-rob-manfred-cant-be-happy#:~:text=Conclusion,such as sliders and cutters.
There's been so much change across the baseball landscape -- from the pitch clock to banning sticky stuff and enlarging the bases, to banning the shift to the explosion in off-speed pitches -- that it's incredibly hard (at least for me) to tease apart what's impacting what. And given that it's May 3rd, an easy explanation here is "Wait for the weather to warm up before drawing conclusions."
Still, here's an article that tries to break it down a bit, comparing the first 750ish games in 2023 to 2024: https://www.si.com/mlb/diamondbacks/offense-is-down-across-mlb-and-rob-manfred-cant-be-happy#:~:text=Conclusion,such as sliders and cutters.
Re juiced balls, what are we to think? Basically nothing concrete. There was a ton of smoke about this in 2019 and 2022, with someone testing the baseballs and claiming that there were clearly different types of balls being used, which Manfred at first denied and then seemed to admit? https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-reportedly-used-three-baseballs-during-2022-season-and-yankees-mightve-benefitted-most-171038661.htmlWhen Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball instituted the pitch clock, placed limitations on defensive shifts, and made moves to increase base stealing, it's not likely that they anticipated a decrease in scoring in 2024. But in fact, run scoring is down 0.18 runs per game across MLB compared to last season. That's about a 4% reduction in runs.
All comparisons in this article are covering the first 744 team games last year with the first 742 this year. So it's apples to apples, so to speak. It should also be noted that full scoring was 4.28 R/G in 2022 and jumped to a year-end 4.62 last year in the first year under the new rules. But the trends causing lower scoring appear to have resumed.
Drilling down further, we can see that walk and strike out rates are mostly unchanged, and in fact the strikeout rate is slightly lower this year compared to the same time period last year. However there is a whopping 13% drop in the home run rate, and BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls in Play (excludes homers, walks and strikeouts) is down six points.
Clearly the league's effort to increase base hits on balls in play through the elimination of the shift has not worked. A side note of interest is that 6.9% of runs scored were unearned in 2023. That percentage has jumped to 10.3% in 2024. The increase in runs, as well as the decrease in batting average and BABIP could also be partly attributed to more errors. (When an error is charged to a fielder the batter is charged with an out)
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Run scoring is down across major league baseball. A decrease in the quality of contact has resulted in lower batting average and fewer homers. One possible cause for the decreases in these areas is the increased reliance on hard breaking pitches, such as sliders and cutters. Defense may also be a factor based on the increase in unearned runs. Not touched upon in this article, as I have no evidence for it, is whether or not there may have been changes to the baseball.
So what say ye?It wouldn't be an MLB offseason without a baseball-related scandal. Despite commissioner Rob Manfred insisting that one baseball would be used during the 2022 MLB season, there is evidence that three different baseballs were utilized, according to Bradford William Davis of Insider.
That conclusion comes courtesy of Dr. Meredith Wills, an astrophysicist who has conducted various studies on MLB balls the past couple of years. Dr. Wills managed to collect a sample of 204 baseballs from the 2022 MLB season and determined that three types of balls were used in games: The dead ball MLB promised it would use, the "juiced" balls that were used in previous seasons and a third ball that split the difference. Dr. Wills dubbed the third ball the "Goldilocks ball" given that its measurements were between those of the "juiced" ball and the dead ball.
Every ball obtained by Dr. Wills met MLB's manufacturing specifications. Those specifications have come under scrutiny, however, as some have argued that the acceptable range for a legal baseball is too large and can result in "legal" baseballs that vary wildly in performance.
MLB purchased Rawlings, the company that makes baseballs for the league, in 2018.
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MLB initially fought back against research suggesting that a different, livelier ball was used in 2019. Eventually, Manfred acknowledged that the balls had less drag due to a manufacturing change. Balls with less drag travel farther, which led to a home run explosion in 2019. A whopping 6,776 home runs were hit that year, shattering the all-time record for home runs in a season. Manfred later said the change was not intentional.
Manfred has attempted to correct the issue since, though evidence suggests that two different types of balls were used in 2021, which MLB confirmed. The league said the balls were used as a result of production delays stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.