MLB baseball to blame for hitting decline across league

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May 12, 2022
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You see a ball hit the right way, back, back, back. you to hear it. It was a home run. How could this not be? No more. It has to be … until it dies on the track, lying comfortably in the glove of a waiting outfielder.

If you’ve watched, oh, three innings from this MLB season, you’ve seen this scenario play out even once.

Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres has a .222 batting average with a .314 expected average. His .444 actual slugging percentage is lower than his expected slugging (.619).

Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports

Balls that look like they should be hit instead of ending up as outs. That’s evident in the disappointments expressed by some players and coaches — who shared their doubts about the quality of baseball itself. But it’s even clearer statistically: Specifically, the IMMINENT statistically, Statcast numbers like xBA and xSLG show what a hitter’s “should” performance is based on batted-ball data. At the individual level, a gap between expected and actual statistics can tell us about a player underperforming or over -performing, and what we can expect going forward. At the general league level, however, there is no general gap at all: In a sample of that size, what you “should” see is often more or less what you done.

This year looks different now.

See. Here are the expected league -wide statistics compared to actual statistics over the past few seasons:

by Baseball Savant

At a glance: Typically, there is little difference between what the data predicts and what actually happens at the league level. But this year, there is a comparatively place of a. (The difference in actual and expected batting average right now is equivalent to the difference between what was the worst offense in the league in history and what was the best in a few years.) But it’s not that simple! Here’s a breakdown of what we can – and can’t – learn from the expected statistics so far.

Is This the Largest Gap We See Between Expected and Actual Statistics?

Perhaps this is clear from the chart above: Yeah, duh, big gap. But the real answer is… type, perhaps, but not so much.

For context, this expected statistic comes from taking basic information about an individual bathed ball — such as exit velocity, launch angle and the ballpark where it was hit — and comparing that with previous data to determine the possible outcome. . But the key here is the data used to make the comparisons. The league calculates the baseline for that twice each year, according to MLB statistician Mike Petriello: once at the All-Star Break and once again after the end of the season. This means that ago the All-Star Break — like, let’s say, today! —the baseline actually comes from years past.

Yes, it’s all bad, (literally) inside-baseball stuff. But it is important to understand what these numbers say. In other words: If you see that there is no gap across the league between expected and actual statistics for 2021 and 2020, you see that there is no gap. when baselines have been adjusted to reflect the offensive environment of those years, which has yet to happen for 2022. In a world without any dramatic, year-over-year changes in offensive environments, this is less meaningful. Unfortunately, MLB is clearly not in that world. If there is a big change in the offensive environment from one year to the next — for example, if baseball itself is different — the numbers will show different things.

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The result? You cannot make a direct comparison today between the expected statistics for this period and the past. They just show different contexts. Data from the previous year is adjusted to fit the specific conditions of the previous year, and the data from this year, well, is also adjusted to fit the specific conditions of the previous year. At least until July.

(If you’re wondering why MLB didn’t update the baseline to more easily reflect the current environment? That’s already been mentioned, Petriello said, but it’s possibly confusing that there are numbers shifting in the middle of the season. All-Star Break and end of the season provide natural points for this kind of re-orientation.)