Baseball's Weirdest!
Nobody can hit -- except we're about to see a HR record
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Nobody can hit in baseball. I mean, nobody hits. It’s just too hard. Batting averages are sliding right off the table. People who’ve spent their adult lives perfecting the craft of hitting in order to arrive in the major leagues finally get there, and then they suddenly look like kids on the JV cut-line, appearing to just hack and flail at whatever slop happens to get pitched near home plate.
They look bad, is the thing. It’s not fun, is the other thing.
“This is the best pitching in the history of baseball, and it’ll continue to be that way as the game evolves,” Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt told Dennis Lin of The Athletic, as part of a great piece Lin wrote on the dearth of .300 hitters in the game. It’s paywalled, but in short, it is a fascinating look at how MLB is just continually evolving away from hitters, which forces them to adjust and forces us to consider other ways of appreciating offensive output.
“We have more technology, we have better training methods, we have better ways to develop nasty pitches,” said Vogt, a longtime catcher before he became a coach. “Guys are throwing the fastest they ever have. Their stuff is moving the most it’s ever moved.”
Hitters are also facing more pitchers per game than perhaps at any point in baseball history, meaning fewer chances to learn early in a contest what any one pitcher is throwing that day and then apply the knowledge in the later innings. Forget seeing a starting pitcher for a third or fourth time in a game; you might not even see him the second time around, depending upon where you bat in the order.
It all stinks, and this is one reason why MLB a couple of years ago placed a strict ban on the most egregious overshifts by defenders in the field. Still, even the allowable defensive alignments are so finely tuned that teams routinely record outs on balls that — anecdotally, at least — used to be sure hits.
“Defensive positioning is really good,” the Cubs’ Nico Hoerner told Lin. “It’s based on thousands of balls that we’ve put in play. Over 600 at-bats, they tend to stand where you hit the ball the most. Not that that’s new, but compared to 20, 30 years ago, just the amount of data is more than you can track with the human eye.”
Hoerner should know: Not only is he a Gold Glove second baseman, but he enters the weekend sitting on a .300 average after going 2 for 5 in a Friday afternoon game at Wrigley Field. Hoerner is trying to bag enough hits over the Cubs’ final three regular-season games to stay above that line, which would make him, let’s see here, checking the list…Oh: one of two players in the National League to hit .300 this season. (Trea Turner is at .305.)
Pretty grim.
Oh! Also: We’re about to see a home run record set.
Don’t yell at me, I only work here. The fact is that MLB is one home run away from establishing a first in the history of the league.
Never have five players reached 50 home runs in the same season. That takes in a lot of dicey territory in both directions, doesn’t it? We swing from the dead-ball era to the segregated-player era to the raised-mound era (everything before 1969) to the steroid era to the PED era to whatever this era is.
Five 50-homer guys in one season? Never. But we’re on the brink.
Even at the height of Cheat Central, this did not occur. In 1998, four players banged 50 or more homers: Mark McGwire (70), Sammy Sosa (66), Ken Griffey Jr. (56) and Greg Vaughn (50). In 2001, Barry Bonds cranked 73 bombs, Sosa 64, Luis Gonzalez 57 and A-Rod 52.
Those are the only two MLB seasons with even four 50-homer bashers, and yes, I believe you can spot the trend-line through those seasons, ‘98 and ‘01. Those were years of, shall we say, creative and imaginative use of the available tools with which to improve one’s offensive output. Once MLB reluctantly decided to enforce a few rules on drug use (sometimes, sort of, but hopefully the tests don’t work or anything), the league-wide home run totals started cratering.
But we’re back to healthy home run outputs despite being mired in a several-year stretch of dreadfully low individual and team batting averages. Again, entering Friday and the final three games of the regular-season schedule, four players were already past 50 homers: Cal Raleigh (60), Kyle Schwarber (56), Shohei Ohtani (54, no big deal, he does this all the time), and Aaron Judge (52 after an early homer Friday night).
Knocking at the door is Eugenio Suarez, who began his season with Arizona but now plays alongside Raleigh in Seattle. Suarez (49 HR) is one big fly away from joining the 50 club and making history. The Mariners are playing at home this weekend, and their opponent, the Dodgers, are completely locked into their playoff seeding no matter what the game results are, so we’ll see.
If the rise in home run totals over the past decade is reflective of anything, it is those lower recent batting averages. As pitchers leveraged greater velocity and greater spin, and — especially — as defenses began regularly employing dramatic overshifts, it just didn’t pay to keep hitting the ball hard on the ground or a low line. So hitters responded by aiming up, over the defenders’ heads.
That’s Kyle Schwarber, right? The Phillies star entered the weekend batting .245, and he’s a career .232 hitter. But Schwarber this season also has those 56 home runs and 132 RBI, and his OPS (that’s on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) is a ludicrously high .943. He has also struck out 191 times, the fourth year in a row that Schwarber has crossed 190. Twice he has surpassed 200 whiffs, which once upon a time would’ve put him in ignomy territory.
Here in 2025, nobody cares, because, look, power! Schwarber will be a free agent this winter and is expected to draw multiple nine-figure offers, perhaps $120 million for four years. He’s currently finishing a four-year, $79 million contract.
“Just because not as many guys hit .300, I think it makes it more impressive,” Schwarber told The Athletic. “It’s showing that the game is in a more difficult place. Guys have different stuff, more velocity, more spin and more shapes that you haven’t seen. I didn’t see those shapes back in 2015, you know? And now it’s more prominent. Personally, I think (hitting .300 is) pretty f—ing cool.”
And pretty flipping rare. For some of us old-heads who always loved a good solid statistic handed down through time, like a .300 average, this is perhaps a stressful moment. But what are you going to do, watch football?
Hardest thing to do across all sports. You know this better than anyone having had a front row seat for decades.
Notwithstanding the vast improvements in pitching, I do feel analytics (negatively) impacted offense strategy given the emphasis on the long ball and "it's OK to strike out" mentality. That's why it's so refreshing to watch the Brewers employ MurphyBall with station-to station hitting (w/occasional dinger) and emphasis on base running, putting pressure on the defense. Put the ball in play, and good things may happen.