GOING TO THE BALLPARK? BETTER BRING A PILLOW
More strikeouts, shifts and openers will dilute fun in 2019, writes Neil Greenberg.
Baseball is constantly evolving, but as the 2019 season prepares to open, the sport’s fielders, and perhaps the joy of the game, are continuing on the slow road to extinction.
Baseball, as we once knew it, is dead. Increasingly, games are not decided by nine players, but three: the hitter, the pitcher and the catcher. The other seven defensive players matter little given the game’s recent trend.
During the 2018 season, more than a third of all major-league plate appearances ended in one of the three true outcomes — a home run, walk or strikeout — the highest rate of all-time. If we ignore pickoffs and stolen bases, that means one out of every three plate appearances concluded with a batter getting a pass to first base, circling all the bases or just simply sent back to the dugout; none of those events require participation from a defensive player other than the pitcher and catcher.
If you find that boring, and there are plenty who do, I’ve got some bad news for you: this is just the tip of the iceberg.
No discussion of the three-true-outcomes hitter is complete without first paying homage to its patron saint Adam Dunn. Dunn, a 14-year veteran from 2001 to 2014, was the king of the three true outcomes. His 10 seasons producing at least 25 home runs, 75 walks and 150 strikeouts are the most of any player ever and twice as many as Ryan Howard, who had five such seasons from 2006 to 2011. Almost half of Dunn’s at-bats during his career ended with one of the three true outcomes.
Dunn was not the first to favour three true outcome at-bats. San Francisco outfielder Bobby Bonds skewed heavily toward the three true outcomes in 1969 (32 home runs, 81 walks and 187 strikeouts) and there were 16 batters to follow in his footsteps over the next three decades. But now it appears teams want as many Dunns in the lineup as they can fit.
In 2018, seven hitters met or exceeded 25 home runs, 75 walks and 150 strikeouts: Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt, Rhys Hoskins, Aaron Judge, Matt Carpenter, Michael Conforto and Justin Smoak. In 2019, 15 batters are projected to meet or exceed the 25-75-150 benchmarks with eight others coming within five at-bats of one or more of the three true outcomes.
Analytics are at the root of the issue. The biggest change brought about by Statcast, a “state-of-the-art tracking technology capable of measuring previously unquantifiable aspects of the game,” is it has reinforced the importance of an uppercut swing that results more often in fly balls and line drives rather than ground balls. According to MLB’S Statcast data, the frequency of home runs has risen from one out of every 37 plate appearances in 2015 to one out of every 33 plate appearances in 2018.
Swinging for the fences more frequently also leads to more strikeouts, which aren’t as taboo as they were in prior years. In other words, you don’t have to worry about the manager chewing you out for being aggressive at the plate. In fact, managers encourage it. Look no further than this year’s Minnesota Twins, who hit a league-leading 50 home runs with 91 walks and 303 strikeouts in 33 spring training games.
But there are two other growing trends that figure to make the game even less exciting by further tamping down hitters’ effectiveness. The first is the proliferation of the so-called “opener,” a reliever used to start the game to keep the primary pitcher (traditional starting pitchers) from facing the top of the lineup as frequently. This allows starters/primary pitchers to work later into games, while preventing hitters from facing any one pitcher more than twice in a game. The data shows relief pitchers, from 2015 to 2018, allowed a .713 OPS the first time through the order whereas a starting pitcher allowed a .716 OPS against; that rose to a .785 OPS against when a starting pitcher went through the order for a third time in a game.
If hitters don’t get the benefit of a third plate appearance against the same pitcher, we’d expect that OPS number and run scoring as a whole to trend downward.
The second trend that could decrease offence and increase boredom? Look for teams to employ more shifts — including those featuring a four-man outfield — in an effort to make life as difficult as possible for opposing hitters. Harper, the most recent free-agent acquisition of the Philadelphia Phillies, has already seen this deployment twice in spring training after never seeing it before in any major-league at-bat in his career. Kris Bryant, Matt Adams, Billy Mckinney, Cody Asche, Aaron Judge, Jose Ramirez, Greg Bird and Blake Swihart all saw a four-outfielder shift for the first time this spring, too. And here’s why: in 2018, batters facing the four-man outfield hit .186 against the alignment with a .339 slugging percentage.
And those factors are just the micro picture. The macro picture is that a lack of parity may diminish any excitement around playoff races. With teams seemingly divided into those building for the future and the league’s legitimate contenders, the late season could be a snooze fest.