It was the Earlier than Instances, November 21, 2019 to be actual. Whereas dinosaurs not roamed the earth, we had but to find out about COVID-19. Unencumbered, a number of FanGraphs staffers descended upon Manhattan for a FanGraphs Dwell occasion and an Successfully Wild taping. Yours really was on the Main League Replace panel alongside The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler and Marc Carig. Close to the top of our half-hour section, EW co-host Meg Rowley requested us, “What would you modify about baseball?… What would you do at this second, at this juncture, to make baseball extra compelling?”
I don’t even recall the reply I supposed to offer, however after ready my flip, I constructed upon one in every of Marc’s concepts about his want to see the ball put in play extra typically. “Begin caring about batting common once more,” I stated. “As a result of batting common is enjoyable.”
An precise hearken to the podcast suggests in any other case, however in my very own recollection, it felt like a kind of record-scratch moments the place every thing stops abruptly and you may hear a pin drop. A FanGraphs author, one with a prolonged observe file of making use of sabermetric rules, one who made his title with objectivity-based Corridor of Fame evaluation — that man, defending batting common?
My impulse to defend this most simple determine — the one which for thus many people served as a gateway drug to caring about batting stats — had arisen late within the 2019 season whereas watching debate over the AL MVP award unfold. Coming off a weak yr with the Rockies, DJ LeMahieu had signed with the Yankees and put collectively what stands out as his greatest full season, hitting .327/.375/.518 whereas setting profession highs in dwelling runs (26), wRC+ (136), and WAR (5.7). LeMahieu ranked ninth within the AL in that final class, considerably behind league chief Alex Bregman (8.3) and MVP winner Mike Trout (7.8, regardless of lacking most of September as a result of season-ending surgical procedure to alleviate a Morton’s neuroma). However LeMahieu’s one-man hit parade had been one of many season’s largest and most nice surprises. He’d gained the hearts of followers within the Bronx, and down the stretch was greeted with chants of “M-V-P!” in his honor.
Someplace between my very own dismissal of the notion that LeMahieu deserved critical MVP consideration and the announcement that he was not a finalist for the award, which was thought of a snub in some quarters, I got here round. Therefore my try to articulate my concern to the FanGraphs Dwell viewers, significantly when the idea linked to Marc’s feedback about how static the sport had grow to be.
“I’m not saying DJ LeMahieu ought to have [been] MVP, however there’s a cause folks care about DJ LeMahieu… [Y]ou’re hitting .330. You’re placing the ball in play… guys are working round on the sector, not placing out. There’s enjoyable there,” I defined, working up a head of steam. “Let’s cease speaking about caring about batting common as being this scourge… It’s a connection to informal fandom, it’s a connection to the sport’s historical past. It’s one thing that I believe, from the analytics facet, we’ve gone too far overboard in working in opposition to… Let’s give a shit about batting common once more.”
I wiped away beads of flopsweat as I waited for my phrases to land. “What about wins and losses? No? Nonetheless silly?” requested Marc as the entire room erupted with laughter. “It’s FanGraphs, now we have to attract the road someplace,” giggled Meg earlier than directing the viewers right into a Q&A session.
Looking back, I can hint a few of my restored appreciation for the stat to having labored on The Cooperstown Casebook. Throughout the e book, I’d famous that the Corridor of Famers with the bottom JAWS rankings at every place had been very often these with shiny batting averages from the high-offense Nineteen Twenties and ’30s whose elections had been aided by the cronyism of the Frankie Frisch/Invoice Terry Veterans Committees. In writing about these gamers, my stance had softened from a reflexive urge to throw the bums out (per the e book’s cheeky subtitle) to a extra understanding rationalization of how they’d snuck in. What’s extra, I’d taken at the least some satisfaction in debunking the best way that sure high-average gamers beforehand derided because the establishment’s most overrated, similar to George Sisler, Hughie Jennings, and Joe Kelley, match extra easily inside a continuum of Corridor of Famers within the gentle of WAR and JAWS.
Statheads who know their historical past know that batting common has been beneath assault since earlier than Invoice James’ emergence. Baseball Journal’s F.C. Lane railed in opposition to it in 1915 and proposed slugging proportion as a greater measure. Department Rickey, along with perfecting the farm system and pulling down the AL/NL colour barrier, kind of invented on-base proportion in 1954. From these proto-sabermetricians to James (who launched Run Created in his Baseball Summary sequence within the Seventies and ’80s) and the dynamic duo of Pete Palmer and John Thorn (who in 1984’s The Hidden Sport of Baseball gave us OPS and Linear Weights), and onto Baseball Prospectus, Tom Tango, and the writers at FanGraphs, good folks have proven again and again that batting common isn’t one of the best stat for measuring offense. It doesn’t correlate as nicely with run scoring as OBP, SLG, or extra superior metrics. Properly, so what? For many years now, we’ve integrated the data of these stats’ significance into our measures of offensive proficiency through OPS+, wOBA, wRC+, and WAR. With out having to crunch these numbers ourselves, we will deploy them when wanted, construct leaderboards, challenge performances, estimate contract values, fill out extra enlightened Corridor of Fame ballots. Huzzah!
But I’m satisfied that we’ve ignored batting common at our peril. Since time is a flat circle, half a decade after that FanGraphs Dwell episode, I discovered myself assuming the same place after responding to a Bluesky submit by Tango himself. Tom has performed nice issues which are essential to what we do right here at FanGraphs. He co-wrote The Guide: Enjoying The Percentages In Baseball; his title is on the backside of each web page of this website; and at MLB.com he’s helped to result in a complete new set of instruments which are furthering our data. However on this explicit day, I bristled at his dismissiveness of the standard stat, and he appeared greatly surprised by my protection.
“[S]ince it’s so overused on the opposite facet as a *main* stage stat, then as a way to “steadiness” issues, then the remainder of us ought to *discard* its utilization,” wrote Tango in a single subsequent submit. Then after railing at it getting used onscreen in a TNT Statcast broadcast, he added within the subsequent, “Because of this it’s important to stamp it out the place we will, as a result of it’ll nonetheless exist elsewhere anyway.”
As a longtime recurring visitor on MLB Community, I’m sufficiently old to recollect Brian Kenny arguing to “Kill the Win” on MLB Now greater than a decade in the past, and whereas I’m not going to supply a full-throated protection of that specific stat, I perceive the urge to cringe, not solely on the notion that we one way or the other must cease counting one thing that’s been a part of baseball for over a century, however that we must always achieve this within the title of “educating” the general public. Having spent over 20 years working to encourage using my very own metric (JAWS) and people of my employers by a wider viewers, I’ve discovered — the laborious method — that the impulse to “educate” doesn’t mechanically generate a want to soak up these classes, and it particularly doesn’t work in the event you’re making an attempt to tug the rug out from beneath the recipient of your message. Searching for to get rid of acquainted statistics is counterproductive and condescending, and solely makes it harder to get throughout a number of the different work that we do.
What’s humorous concerning the makes an attempt to maneuver past batting common and the win is that the sport itself is doing a bang-up job of marginalizing each statistics already. We’re simply previous a Corridor of Fame election cycle the place a great share of the dialogue centered across the growing remoteness of attainable pitching milestones similar to 300 and even 200 wins, as beginning pitcher workloads have been scaled again dramatically over the previous decade. In the meantime, in 2024, the league-wide batting common was simply .243, which is in a digital tie for the fourth-lowest mark since 1900, forward of solely 1968 (.237), 1908 (.239), and 1967 (.242). That digital tie is with the 2022 season, the ultimate yr earlier than MLB banned infield shifts within the service of selling offense. Luis Arraez gained the 2024 NL batting title — his third straight batting title, thoughts you — with only a .314 common, the bottom mark for a league chief since 1988 (Tony Gwynn with .313). Arraez had the earlier lowest-since-Gwynn mark as nicely, .316 in 2022.
Extra on the numbers beneath. Relating to the Corridor of Fame election cycle, a fair higher share of the dialogue centered upon the chance that Ichiro Suzuki may be the primary place participant to be elected unanimously. It’s not as a result of he was a higher participant than those that preceded him, from Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth on by way of Willie Mays and Henry Aaron, however as a result of Twenty first-century voters have largely abstained from the gatekeeping to which a grumpy faction of previous voters clung.
Leaving apart the frustration brought on by one particular person’s depriving Suzuki of unanimity, I’m virtually as puzzled by some observers’ astonishment that it was Suzuki (or earlier than him, Derek Jeter), and never some slugger of current classic, that just about turned the primary place participant to tug off a clear sweep. Regardless of his comparatively modest 107 OPS+ and .402 SLG, it shouldn’t be laborious to know the attraction of Suzuki and the opposite hit machines, from Jeter on again to Rod Carew and (leaving the ickiness of his off-field life apart, which admittedly isn’t straightforward) Pete Rose, and earlier than them, to Sisler, Cobb, and Willie Keeler.
Batting common is leisure worth, in quantity.
It’s imprecise to say the thing of the pitcher-batter confrontation is to get a success. It’s to keep away from making an out — therefore the statheads’ appreciation for OBP — and for a crew to take action sufficient instances in a recreation that it scores extra runs than its opponent. Hits are the most typical method of doing this, about 3 times extra widespread than walks, they usually’re vastly extra entertaining. Pitch recognition, timing, the sound and sight of contact, the trajectory of the ball, the acceleration and velocity of the batter and the baserunners, the converging of fielders towards the ball, the suspense of what may transpire if a play is made… a lot is definitely occurring! Notably with runners on base, a ball in play lights up the sector like a pinball recreation. It will not be as dramatic as a house run, or as productive, however it’s motion, it’s pleasure — to my thoughts essentially the most accessible type of pleasure the sport has to supply. That model of pleasure is the one most frequently created by the fellows with the excessive batting averages. Ought to or not it’s a thriller why folks take pleasure in that, and why they particularly want to have fun the gamers who most continuously make that occur?
Once I spoke up on behalf of LeMahieu, Main League Baseball was coming off a high-offense season that featured a file 6,776 dwelling runs, thanks largely to a extra aerodynamic baseball. The 30 groups hit a mixed .252/.323/.435 whereas scoring 4.83 runs per recreation. Half a decade and a number of other rule adjustments later — together with not solely the banning of the shift but additionally the addition of the pitch clock, the disengagement rule, and bigger bases — MLB’s total slashline for 2024 was .243/.312/.399 en path to scoring 4.39 runs per recreation. Residence run ranges weren’t that far off from 2018, earlier than the file excessive, however the league-wide batting common declined 9 factors from the place it was in 2019, a drop representing the lack of 2,216 hits over a 4,858-game season, about 0.9 hits per recreation between the 2 groups. The 2024 mark was eight factors decrease than in 2014, and 19 factors decrease than in 2009, representing the lack of 3,701 hits, about 1.5 hits per recreation between the 2 groups. You may not discover it in the event you’re taking in solely a recreation per week, however in the event you’re a daily shopper, you undoubtedly discover. In response to the ever-increasing common pitch velocities which have made contact harder than ever, batters have centered upon getting extra bang for his or her buck, adjusting their pitch choice and swing planes to hit the ball within the air within the hope that it clears the fence and offsets the rise in strikeouts. Broadly talking it has, however that doesn’t imply the sport is healthier for it.
It could be an overstatement to say that baseball is in dire bother provided that the game set income data in 2023 ($11.6 billion) and ’24 ($12.1 billion). However even with back-to-back attendance will increase prior to now two seasons, attendance is down over 10% relative to its 2007 high-water mark. What’s extra, the rise in attendance is about to endure a setback provided that each the A’s and the Rays are briefly shifting to minor league ballparks for 2025. The current World Collection between the Dodgers and Yankees set a post-pandemic excessive so far as tv scores go, however these scores had been nonetheless decrease than in any World Collection between 1968 and 2019. The game can’t take its already-marginalized place within the nationwide consciousness without any consideration, which is why it comes as a reduction that the pitch clock has been so profitable, trimming a mean of 28 minutes from video games relative to 2022.
There’s no straightforward treatment to extend the league-wide batting common; if I had one, I may be the subsequent commissioner, however I don’t. Adjusting the peak and distance of the fences, to disincentivize homers whereas creating extra territory for defenders to cowl, is an choice, albeit an costly one as it could require modifications in each ballpark, seemingly together with a lack of seating. Widening the sector itself — flaring the foul traces outward by a number of levels — might be too radical for many tastes, significantly in a recreation that loves its proper angles.
Some potential adjustments, similar to the rise of the pitching distance, bear no fruit upon experimentation. Others can unleash unintended penalties. We’ve gotten a glimpse at what occurs when the league monkeys with the composition of the ball itself; not solely did adjustments in manufacturing supplies and strategies result in balls that had been extra aerodynamic, however the philosophical change introduced by the so-called launch-angle revolution compounded the impression, resulting in the aforementioned swell in homers.
One factor that hasn’t been tried is a return to the time-honored mechanism for restoring steadiness to the sport, tweaking the strike zone’s vertical boundaries. It hasn’t been performed since 1996, when the decrease boundary was modified from the highest of the batter’s knees to only beneath the kneecap. Tightening the zone might goose offense, although a few of that will be through walks, not hits, and one has to wonder if it could exacerbate the already-worrisome developments towards extra hard-throwing relievers and the frequency of pitcher accidents. Final week at Baseball Prospectus, Patrick Dubuque prompt shrinking the scale of gloves as a way of accelerating batting common on balls in play, which feels prefer it may be essentially the most delicate change — one which prices us some net gems, maybe, however might add a bit extra journey to defensive play, and a sprinkling of additional hits.
Proposing and choosing aside these doable options might fill a number of columns, and we’ve obtained a protracted solution to go till Opening Day. For now I’m content material merely to get this long-simmering rant off my chest. Most of you studying this perceive that batting common isn’t the be-all and end-all of offensive stats; if not, the literature towards that finish, on this website and others, is voluminous. Understanding that, nonetheless, doesn’t require you to undertake the mindset of your pleasant neighborhood president of baseball operations and demand that our each dialogue of baseball level towards maximizing wins and WAR throughout a roster. Simply let batting common be what it’s at all times been, an simply accessible if typically deceptive thread that runs by way of a century and a half of baseball historical past, and thru most of our fandom.
