As the 2024 MLB season has passed the halfway point and approaches the All-Star break, there is one big storyline across the league that warrants some attention.
Hitting is down.
Really down.
It is not so much the result of hitters getting worse, as much as it is about the fact pitchers are simply way better as a group than they have ever been.
Entering play on Sunday the major league batting average was a dismal .242 across the league, which would be one of the lowest marks in the history of the sport.
It is currently tied for the third-lowest league average in baseball history, ahead of only 1968 (.238) and a tie in 1888 and 1908 (.239). The 1968 season is famous for being the year that prompted the league to lower the pitcher’s mound to level the playing field for hitters, while the other two seasons are obviously going way back into the dead-ball era of the league.
There are also only 11 players who qualify for the batting title hitting over .300 for the season.
There are a lot of theories for why this is happening. An added emphasis on hitters to go for launch angle and power instead of simply making contact. A lack of fundamentals. Perhaps even advanced scouting has led to more aggressive defensive shifting. While the league banned the overload shifts we saw in recent years, it is still possible for teams to position their players more aggressively.
But all of those theories overlook the most obvious cause of the hitting decline — it is all about the pitchers. Not only in terms of their talent but also in the way they are developed, coached and specialized.
Pitchers are no longer brought up to be crafty, pitch-to-contact arms. They are being developed to bring maximum effort and as much velocity and movement as they possibly can on every pitch. The name of the game is to get swings and misses and not even allow the ball to be put into play.
If you go back 15 to 20 years ago, anybody who threw over 95 mph on a consistent basis was a power pitcher. If you threw 100 you were an alien. Now? Just about every pitcher in the league averages about 95 mph, while every team has at least one or two guys that touch 100 mph. That does not even get into the movement on pitches now or the fact that the top starters have four or five-plus pitches in their arsenal.
That emphasis on power and movement has another potential impact: With pitchers maxing out, teams do not care if starters pitch far into games. They are not tiring themselves out or wearing down, and hitters have to face a constant cycle of fresh, live arms.
The increase in analytics and scouting has also made it so teams and pitchers know exactly where every weakness with hitters is, right down to what their batting average is on pitches in certain parts of the strike zone. The information overload, the increased talent and the change in strategy have made hitting a baseball even harder than it already was.
The numbers reflect that.