It was the Earlier than Instances, November 21, 2019 to be actual. Whereas dinosaurs now not roamed the earth, we had but to study COVID-19. Unencumbered, a number of FanGraphs staffers descended upon Manhattan for a FanGraphs Reside 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 meant to provide, however after ready my flip, I constructed upon one among Marc’s concepts about his want to see the ball put in play extra usually. “Begin caring about batting common once more,” I mentioned. “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 part stops abruptly and you’ll hear a pin drop. A FanGraphs author, one with a prolonged monitor report of making use of sabermetric rules, one who made his identify with objectivity-based Corridor of Fame evaluation — that man, defending batting common?
My impulse to defend this most elementary 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 12 months with the Rockies, DJ LeMahieu had signed with the Yankees and put collectively what stands out as his finest 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 on account 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 greatest 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 severe MVP consideration and the announcement that he was not a finalist for the award, which was thought-about a snub in some quarters, I got here round. Therefore my try to articulate my concern to the FanGraphs Reside viewers, significantly when the idea linked to Marc’s feedback about how static the sport had turn into.
“I’m not saying DJ LeMahieu ought to have [been] MVP, however there’s a motive folks care about DJ LeMahieu… [Y]ou’re hitting .330. You’re placing the ball in play… guys are operating round on the sphere, not putting 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 feel, from the analytics aspect, we’ve gone too far overboard in working towards… 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, we’ve to attract the road someplace,” giggled Meg earlier than directing the viewers right into a Q&A session.
On reflection, I can hint a few of my restored appreciation for the stat to having labored on The Cooperstown Casebook. Inside the guide, I’d famous that the Corridor of Famers with the bottom JAWS rankings at every place have been very often these with shiny batting averages from the high-offense 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 guide’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 way in which that sure high-average gamers beforehand derided because the establishment’s most overrated, corresponding to George Sisler, Hughie Jennings, and Joe Kelley, match extra easily inside a continuum of Corridor of Famers within the mild of WAR and JAWS.
Statheads who know their historical past know that batting common has been below assault since earlier than Invoice James’ emergence. Baseball Journal’s F.C. Lane railed towards it in 1915 and proposed slugging share as a greater measure. Department Rickey, along with perfecting the farm system and flattening the AL/NL coloration barrier, kind of invented on-base share 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 the most effective stat for measuring offense. It doesn’t correlate as properly with run scoring as OBP, SLG, or extra superior metrics. Properly, so what? For many years now, we’ve included 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, mission 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 Reside episode, I discovered myself assuming the same place after responding to a Bluesky submit by Tango himself. Tom has performed nice issues which are vital to what we do right here at FanGraphs. He co-wrote The Ebook: Taking part in The Percentages In Baseball; his identify is on the backside of each web page of this website; and at MLB.com he’s helped to result in an entire new set of instruments which are furthering our data. However on this explicit day, I bristled at his dismissiveness of the common-or-garden stat, and he appeared shocked by my protection.
“[S]ince it’s so overused on the opposite aspect as a *major* stage stat, then with the intention 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, “For this reason 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 individual stat, I perceive the urge to cringe, not solely on the notion that we one way or the other have to cease counting one thing that’s been a part of baseball for over a century, however that we should always achieve this within the identify 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 manner — that the impulse to “educate” doesn’t mechanically generate a want to soak up these classes, and it particularly doesn’t work should you’re trying to tug the rug out from below the recipient of your message. Searching for to eradicate acquainted statistics is counterproductive and condescending, and solely makes it tougher to get throughout among the different work that we do.
What’s humorous in regards to 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 rising remoteness of attainable pitching milestones corresponding 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 12 months 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 properly, .316 in 2022.
Extra on the numbers beneath. Concerning the Corridor of Fame election cycle, a fair higher share of the dialogue targeted upon the likelihood that Ichiro Suzuki is perhaps 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 attributable to one individual’s depriving Suzuki of unanimity, I’m nearly as puzzled by some observers’ astonishment that it was Suzuki (or earlier than him, Derek Jeter), and never some slugger of latest 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 understand the enchantment 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 group to take action sufficient occasions in a recreation that it scores extra runs than its opponent. Hits are the commonest manner of doing this, about 3 times extra frequent 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 taking place! Notably with runners on base, a ball in play lights up the sphere like a pinball recreation. It might not be as dramatic as a house run, or as productive, nevertheless 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 blokes with the excessive batting averages. Ought to it’s a thriller why folks get pleasure from that, and why they particularly want to rejoice the gamers who most incessantly make that occur?
Once I spoke up on behalf of LeMahieu, Main League Baseball was coming off a high-offense season that featured a report 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 several other rule adjustments later — together with not solely the banning of the shift but in addition 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 report 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 won’t discover it should you’re taking in solely a recreation per week, however should you’re an everyday client, you positively discover. In response to the ever-increasing common pitch velocities which have made contact tougher than ever, batters have targeted 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 will be an overstatement to say that baseball is in dire bother on condition 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 previously two seasons, attendance is down over 10% relative to its 2007 high-water mark. What’s extra, the rise in attendance is about to undergo a setback on condition that each the A’s and the Rays are briefly transferring to minor league ballparks for 2025. The latest World Collection between the Dodgers and Yankees set a post-pandemic excessive so far as tv rankings go, however these rankings have 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 with no consideration, which is why it comes as a reduction that the pitch clock has been so profitable, trimming a median 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 is perhaps the following 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 possibility, albeit an costly one as it could require modifications in each ballpark, seemingly together with a lack of seating. Widening the sphere itself — flaring the foul strains outward by a couple of levels — might be too radical for many tastes, significantly in a recreation that loves its proper angles.
Some potential adjustments, corresponding 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 have 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 may goose offense, although a few of that may be through walks, not hits, and one has to wonder if it could exacerbate the already-worrisome traits towards extra hard-throwing relievers and the frequency of pitcher accidents. Final week at Baseball Prospectus, Patrick Dubuque steered shrinking the dimensions of gloves as a way of accelerating batting common on balls in play, which feels prefer it is perhaps essentially the most refined change — one which prices us some net gems, maybe, however may add a bit extra journey to defensive play, and a sprinkling of additional hits.
Proposing and selecting aside these doable options may fill a number of columns, and we’ve obtained an extended option 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. Figuring out 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 all the time 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.
