MLB run scoring: There’s not much of it in 2021
By Bill Felber
About one-fifth of the way through the 2021 MLB season, one trend in scoring is becoming clear: Almost nobody can hit.
Home runs are on pace to be hit at the lowest rate since 2015. Run scoring is down six percent from last season, which was off four percent from 2019.
Can anyone hit in MLB any more?
But the true eye-opener is batting generally. The Major League average at this point is .234. That’s 11 percentage points down from 2020, which itself was off seven percentage points from 2019.
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In fact, if the present batting numbers hold, 2021 will go down in history as arguably the least offensive season in the game’s recorded history. The previous all-time low for overall batting average, .237, occurred in 1968 and brought about the lowering of the pitcher’s mound.
It’ not just base hits that are notable by their absence, although they certainly are. Players have forgotten how to reach base by any means. The overall on base average is .311, which if it holds up would be the 11th lowest of all time and the worst since the .299 on base average of 1968.
The .391 MLB slugging average ranks only 58th highest, and reverses a trend that had emphasized slugging above all else. The all-time record for single-season slugging average is .437, set just last season. The record before that was .435, set in 2019. The 2017 season also ranks among the all-time top 10 for slugging.
The result is an acceleration of an ongoing decline in scoring. When teams averaged 4.83 runs per game in 2019, it represented the high point in offensive efficiency since 2006. Run production fell by 3.8 percent in 2020, and at 4.36 runs per game, it’s on pace to fall another 6.3 percent this season.
If that happens, run-scoring would return to levels last seen in 2015.
The easy reaction is to look at the use of a five percent less lively ball as the reason for the offensive decline. There may be something to that, although the preliminary evidence seems to suggest that the average home run ball is flying about 398 feet, virtually the same distance as last season.
The truth is that offensive production is off across the board. Not only is the MLB batting average down 11 points from its historic 2020 lows, but the .311 on base average is also off 11 points, and the .391 slugging average is down 27 percentage points.
The strikeout rate, by contrast, is rocking around at record levels. Batters are fanning at a rate of 9 per game – that’s one per inning. The record pace, set in 2019, is 8.81 strikeouts per game. Even then, batters produced a .252 average.
What’s going on? The data doesn’t provide an explanation, but given the trends, it’s fair to look at the changes in approaches to offense that have mirrored the decline. The most obvious of those is the nearly universal adoption of the ‘uppercut swing plane,’ an approach that is calculated to maximize home run production.
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If the trend toward dead ball era offense continues, it will be only fair to ask whether the ‘all-or-nothing’ approach to offense is actually producing the results it was intended to produce.