I was going to write about the conflicts that are occurring simultaneously within the Democratic and Republican parties. The progressives and moderates of the Democratic party cannot come together on an infrastructure bill because neither side wants to give an inch at this point. While in the Republican party, if you do not agree that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, then you are not welcome in the party. But I am not going to write about politics tonight. Instead, I am going to share excerpts from an article by Ronald Blum of the Associated Press last night about the 2021 baseball season. I find baseball at this time of year is much more important than what is going on in Washington.
The major league batting average dropped to .244 this season, its lowest since the year of the pitcher in 1968, though offense picked up markedly following baseball’s midseason crackdown on grip-enhancing substances for pitchers. MLB’s stricter enforcement had the desired impact, ending a run of 12 consecutive full seasons in which strikeouts had set records annually.
There were a record 2,664 more strikeouts than hits, the gap increasing from 1,147 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 784 in 2019, when strikeouts topped hits for the first time. While there were 42,145 strikeouts, a slight decrease from 42,823 in 2019, hits declined from 42,039 to 39,481 as computer-aided defensive shifts proliferated. The big league batting average was .271 in 1999 at the height of the Steroids Era, when there were 45,327 hits.
This year’s batting average of .243799 was just below 1972′s .243807, down from .245 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and .252 in 2019. There average was in the .260s from 2001-09 before the rise of defensive shifts. There were 5,944 home runs, down from a record 6,776 in 2019, which broke the mark of 6,105 set in 2017.
Baseball officials are concerned about the decreased action caused by the dominance of the so-called Three True Outcomes: home run, walk and strikeout. MLB experimented with a 12-inch greater distance between the mound and home plate during a portion of the Atlantic League season but found the increased distance was largely not noticeable from the 60 feet, 6 inches, that has been standard since the NL moved back the mound by 5 feet in 1883.
Not that I know anything about baseball, but I expect MLB to eliminate the shift and the move to four outfielders by requiring two infielders must be on each side of second base and in the infield at the time of the pitch. Drastic changes such as lengthening the distance between the plate and mound or shrinking the strike zone is not going to happen.
Stay safe. Wash your hands regularly. Schedule your vaccine and booster. Wear your mask. Social distance.
Orchid of the Day: Major League Baseball because it is playoff time for the next month.
Onion of the Day: Major League Baseball because it takes a month for the playoffs to end. Game 7 of the World Series is scheduled for November 3.
Quote of the Day: “A healthy political party can’t be stuck in the past and it can’t be a cult of personality. This should be obvious from Trump’s loss in the personality-driven 2020 contest. That year, the GOP couldn’t even write a policy platform for its nominating convention. Instead, it released a bizarre statement of fealty to Trump. If the GOP wants to make inroads among the many voters who aren’t loyal to the former president, it needs a policy agenda. Such an agenda would communicate the values the party stands for, as well as offering solutions to the challenges citizens face.” Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.