Either aces of teams are great, or major league hitters need a boost. The batting line of the season through the first day of multiple games stands at .191/.264/.295. Seven hundred sixty nine plate appearances into the season, the league is batting like a good hitting pitcher. I’m actually impressed that 59 walks were issued. The starting pitching was very good, as they combined to limit batters to a .170/.235/.235 line. In other words, they gave up just about as many walks + HBP as extra bases. Starters gave up a home run once every 113 at bats in the first 10 games.
Hitters did better against relief pitching, with a .231/.317/.415 line. That’s another indication the starters were very good. Batters did not deliver in the clutch, with the league hitting .144 with men in scoring position, and just 1 for 12 with the bases loaded.
We’ll see how much these numbers change today when another set of aces take the mound.
You could do a comparison of that stats line against the stats line of batters against those pitchers over the entirety of last season, to see whether the stats are in line with the norm, or it was just an incredibly slow start/good day for pitchers.
The ‘common wisdom’ is that spring training is so long for the pitchers sake, not the batters, but it appears after the first day that the arms have benefited more.
Although it was 769 plate appearances, which is a fair amount, it could still be the sample size or other conditions (like opening day expectations, pressure, unfamiliarity with major league surroundings, etc.) that have led to those stats.
I think it’s simpler than that. First game, everyone rolls out their ace. The best pitchers in baseball were pitching, and almost no bad ones.
The fact that batters did fine against relievers tends to confirm this simple theory.
I’ve been yelping for a while now about the big decline in offense over the past five years. And I know I’ve gotten to be a bore about it. But when even David Pinto is getting a litle worried…
Anyhoo, it’s obvious that baseball will not end the year with a .191/.264/.295 composite batting line and 4.7 runs per game (both teams combined). That would make the offensive disasters of 1908 and 1968 look like bodacious batting bashes.
In fact, I doubt that such putrid offense would even be allowed to continue beyond a few weeks or so. The umpires would be informed in no uncertain terms to start giving the hitters more of a break.
But I do believe the huge decline in offense over the past five years will continue. The slump will be especially pronounced in the NL, where the bottom half of the lineup is crippled by the pitcher “hitting.”
In fact, I would be a little surprised if the NL even manages to average eight runs a game this year. I think we’re going back to deadball era levels of run-scoring in the NL.
By the way, last year the NL slumped to 8.26 runs per game. We’re almost back to deadball levels (generally seven to eight runs per game) already in the NL. The trend has been all down, down, down. I think we’ll get to deadball in the NL this year, especially with some prominent offensive talent leaving the league during the offseason.
Sorry to keep stringing out the thread. But last year the AL averaged 8.92 runs per game. That’s hardly outlandish scoring by historical standards, and it’s well down from five years earlier. But it’s still well above the general levels of the deadball era.
(I’m using the baseball-reference.com one-team averages and multiplying them by two. This leads to some minor inaccuracy due to interleague play.)
I think that AL scoring will be down this year, too. But it will probably still look halfway respectable. The DH is a critical factor here.