[Mick]

https://apnews.com/article/mlb-sports-ba...dium=email

Not specific to the Giants, but:

The league-wide MLB batting average is down to .243, the lowest level since 1968. There have only been five seasons with a lower batting average than this year: 1967 and 1968, and then the dead ball eras of 1884, 1888 and 1908. Several things are believed to be causing this, including higher velocity of pitches — there were 3,356 pitches that came in over 100 miles per hour, up from 1,829 in 2021 and 1,056 in 2019 — and more defensive shifts, coming in at 66,961 defensive shifts this year, up from 59,063 in 2021, itself up enormously from the 2,349 shifts in 2011.

That’s a 30-fold increase in shifts.

BC

I read that the average 4-seam fastball velocity in 2008 was 91.8 and last year it was 93.8. What's interesting to me is that the two reasons offered for declining batting averages are the increased velocity and the shifts. It seems to me that the two reasons conflict a bit, because one would think that the higher velocity would mean swings that are typically "late" which means the batter should have a greater tendency to "push" the ball to the off-field, yet the shifts are typically to the "pull" side of the field.

I suspect that the dichotomy between the increased speed and the increased variety of pitches might contribute to the lower batting averages; e.g., the greater usage of curves, splittlers, sinkers, cut fastballs, sliders, knuckle curves, etc. are keeping the hitters more off-balance.

P. S. I think we need to be careful about comparing velocities from different eras. Different speed guns measured the speed of a pitch at different points, and over the years, as average velocities have climbed, it's because they are measuring closer and closer to the pitcher's hand. A pitch loses 9% to 10% of its speed as it gets closer to home plate. The original SpeedGun (developed by Decatur Technologies) measured the ball pretty close to home plate...they originally built radar detectors for the police. The next generation JUGS came out, then the Stalker in the 1990s, then the Stalker Pro and Stalker Pro II. So the original SpeedGun would measure the same pitch at 90 as a JUGS measurement at 92 with a Stalker Pro at 94 and a Stalker Pro II at 95.

[Mick]

https://apnews.com/article/mlb-sports-ba...dium=email

Not specific to the Giants, but:

The league-wide MLB batting average is down to .243, the lowest level since 1968. There have only been five seasons with a lower batting average than this year: 1967 and 1968, and then the dead ball eras of 1884, 1888 and 1908. Several things are believed to be causing this, including higher velocity of pitches — there were 3,356 pitches that came in over 100 miles per hour, up from 1,829 in 2021 and 1,056 in 2019 — and more defensive shifts, coming in at 66,961 defensive shifts this year, up from 59,063 in 2021, itself up enormously from the 2,349 shifts in 2011.

That’s a 30-fold increase in shifts.

BC

I read that the average 4-seam fastball velocity in 2008 was 91.8 and last year it was 93.8. What's interesting to me is that the two reasons offered for declining batting averages are the increased velocity and the shifts. It seems to me that the two reasons conflict a bit, because one would think that the higher velocity would mean swings that are typically "late" which means the batter should have a greater tendency to "push" the ball to the off-field, yet the shifts are typically to the "pull" side of the field.

I suspect that the dichotomy between the increased speed and the increased variety of pitches might contribute to the lower batting averages; e.g., the greater usage of curves, splittlers, sinkers, cut fastballs, sliders, knuckle curves, etc. are keeping the hitters more off-balance.

P. S. I think we need to be careful about comparing velocities from different eras. Different speed guns measured the speed of a pitch at different points, and over the years, as average velocities have climbed, it's because they are measuring closer and closer to the pitcher's hand. A pitch loses 9% to 10% of its speed as it gets closer to home plate. The original SpeedGun (developed by Decatur Technologies) measured the ball pretty close to home plate...they originally built radar detectors for the police. The next generation JUGS came out, then the Stalker in the 1990s, then the Stalker Pro and Stalker Pro II. So the original SpeedGun would measure the same pitch at 90 as a JUGS measurement at 92 with a Stalker Pro at 94 and a Stalker Pro II at 95.