It’s no secret that batting average has been a casualty of MLB’s feast-or-famine aesthetic with launch angle and exit velocity replacing contact hitting and moving runners (remember small ball?) as the sport’s new currency. This philosophical shift has been in the works for years, building to a crescendo in 2021.
Pitchers have never thrown harder (or with less command) and the result has been an offensive ice age of sorts with rampant strikeouts and no-hitters—once reserved for MLB’s best and brightest—now becoming a near-weekly occurrence. No disrespect to Spencer Turnbull, who pitched a whale of a game Tuesday night, but let’s not lose sight of the fact the Mariners were just no-hit for the second time in a month, managing a grand total of two base-runners against a pitcher who had A) never gone more than seven innings in a start and B) led all of MLB with 17 losses two seasons ago.
The Mariners, who enter Wednesday’s action a game under .500 (21-22), have hit a combined .199 this season, which, if sustained over 162 games, would be the worst average of all-time. Four of the 11 lowest averages in big-league history were submitted last year—the Reds (.212), Rangers (.217), Pirates and Cubs (both .220)—and this season figures to continue on that trend with the Mariners, Brewers and Indians (who, like Seattle, have also been no-hit twice) all under .220.
MLB’s recent whiff parade has caught the attention of past players like former Yankees and A’s slugger Reggie Jackson, who called the sport’s strikeout epidemic “embarrassing.” Baseball in its current incarnation barely resembles the game Jackson played in his 1970s heyday.
Analytics, now seated front and center after languishing at the kids’ table for decades, has become a driving force in MLB, informing both roster construction and in-game decision-making. With how quickly baseball evolves, our current preoccupation with strikeouts will surely give way to some other, more pressing annoyance in a few years (there’s always another fire to put out). But when a major-league team—not a player but an entire ROSTER of millionaires—is hitting below the Mendoza line, it’s a problem, and one that should probably be addressed sooner rather than later.
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