Every Monday Baseball Musings compares the offense of the current season to the previous season through the same number of full weeks. Through eight full weeks, MLB games in 2024 average 8.66 runs per game compared to 9.16 R/G in 2023, a half run drop. That gap has been consistent week to week with home runs and other hits down. Walks are now down 0.3 per game, and that gap keeps widening as the seasons progress. Strikeouts are down almost 0.5 per game.

With all three true outcomes down, balls in play should be up, and that should lead to more hits other than home runs. Those other hits are down from 14.41 per game to 14.06 per game. MLB BABIP is down from .297 last year to .287 this year.

What’s going on?

There are a number of elite strikeout pitchers on the shelf. The absence of Gerrit Cole, Spencer Strider, Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Shane Bieber, etc. could bring Ks down a bit. Home runs being down a bit could be from a cold spring (especially in the northeast) or the ball having a lower coefficient of restitution. It could also be that after a year under the new shift rules, teams have found a more optimum legal positioning strategy.

Looking at league STATCAST data, however, another explanation comes to mind. Average and max exit velocities are consistent over the last four seasons. Average launch angles, however, rose in each of the last three seasons, from 12.6 degrees in 2021 to 13.1 degrees in 2024. There might be a point where launch angles become too high, and if launch angles go get too high, a lot of fly balls will be landing in gloves. We do see that infield fly balls are up and HR/Fly Ball are down. Maybe it’s simply some batters are going for a home run launch angle who should instead be going for a line drive launch angle.

The latest week produced 8.72 runs per game. Home runs were up from the previous week but other hits were down. Seems we can’t have both! Strikeouts, at 16.20 per game, were at their lowest level of any week this season. You can follow the weekly scoring here.