Striking out is no longer anything to be ashamed of in baseball. In fact, it's now just an act of fitting in.
For the first time ever, there were more strikeouts than hits last month in Major League Baseball, per the Elias Sports Bureau. Almost one-third of plate appearances this season have ended with the ball not being put in play.
Over the last couple of years, baseball has increasingly become a game dependent on the three true outcomes: walks, strikeouts and home runs. Last season, for example, players either failed to put the ball in play or smacked it over the fence roughly 34 percent of the time. In 2018, that total is up to 34.5 percent.
"One month is a rather small sample and we are hoping that the phenomenon of strikeouts exceeding hits is an anomaly that will not persist over the course of the season," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told the Associated Press in a statement.
There were 6,656 strikeouts and 6,360 hits in April. Home runs were slightly down from last year's record total, with an average of 2.18 per game, compared to 2.34 in 2017 (there were 912 home runs in total).
These numbers illustrate why baseball's pace of play issues can't be fixed with a pitch clock or limiting mound visits. Through the first week of the season, the average time of game was longer compared to last year.
April was an ugly month overall for MLB, with seven teams on track to lose more than 100 games. Though it's likely at least two of those clubs –– the Nationals and Dodgers –– will pick up the pace, it seems like it will be a summer of unparalleled ineptitude. That isn't a surprise, considering so many clubs sat out of the free agent market entirely.
Fortunately, the Red Sox are averse to the issues of bad baseball and gargantuan strikeout totals. They own the best record in baseball and are 26th in the league in strikeouts.
