These charts are from an article by Travis Sawchick on FanGraphs back in 2018. It's preliminary stuff and not definitive, and raises a lot of questions, but is interesting nonetheless. Is baseball better or worse for this trend of fewer chances by fielders? I don't know, but it points out that the game is certainly different than before and is constantly changing.
The whole article is worth a read. And there are some good points raised by readers in the comments section. I've been looking for more on this and would like to find some fresher references than a three-year old column, but I think this is fascinating stuff regardless.
--M.C.
9 comments:
Not certain I understand the meaning of these stats?
It makes more sense if you read the story, but in a nutshell they keep track of all the balls put into play over a season across all of MLB. And they tally how many each fielder catches--how many plays he makes. You can see the decline in those totals.
For example, CFs made 10886 plays in 2007, but only 8552 plays in 2017.
They think it is because more guys are striking out (no fielding play) and more guys are hitting homers. (no credit to any fielder as the ball is out of play). But it could be other things, too.
Intuitively, we know there is "less action" in the game. We can see it. This just quantifies that--or at least it seems to.
Dedniel Nunez goes on the IL.
Giants pick up Ashton Goudeau, RHP, on a waiver claim.
Do the numbers of homers and the numbers of strikeouts correlate with plays in the field. I can see how strike outs might, but being that home runs are not outs, 3 outs still have to be made, so it would seem as if strike outs as another form of out would take away from chances. If we are talking about just plays and not outs, clearly lower batting averages should end up with less plays as there will be less batters in a game. Another factor over a season, could be the number of extra innings played, but I have not yet read the article which I will do tomorrow, but it appears that these data can be explained mathematically.
It's the total number of chances. So strikeouts reduce that, and ML hitters strike out more.
The first year of 30 teams, 1998, had 31893 strikeouts (6.56 pg) in total. In 2019, it was 42823 (8.81 pg), just to give you an idea.
(https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/bat.shtml#all_teams_standard_batting)
It's weird because walks, GIDPs, TBs are pretty stable. Homers have jumped, of course. Assists and errors have dropped noticeably, too:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/field.shtml
Another Travis Sawchick article, this time on FiveThirtyEight, about foul balls.
In 2017 more balls were hit foul than were hit into play! That trend has continued. Foul balls have increased almost 12% since the expansion to 30 teams in 1998. That's about 14000 more foul balls in 2018 than in 1998. And about 26000 more pitches were thrown in 2018 than in 1998.
Stadia are smaller, too, so the "penalty" for foul balls is less as fewer are caught for outs.
Sawchick believes this is key driver of slower pace-of-play as there is more time between balls hit fair to fielders. SI reported that in 1998 there were 5.05 pitches between balls in play for a hit or out, and in 2018 it was 5.73 pitches between balls in play for a hit or an out.
Not much you can do about foul balls. Hitters have learned to "hang in there" against the increasing velocity and pitch variety they face.
According to this article on Beyond the Box Score the percentage of games that go to extras has been stable for most of baseball history, between 7-10%, and that 80% of them are decided by the 12th inning.
So seasonal data on balls-in-play or fielding chances should not be impacted by extra innings.
If we make more foul territory and more balls are caught according to the above explanation games would shorten somewhat, but the tradeoff again would be that the fans will be less close from the action and the seats would not be as desirable. On the other hand with the seats very close and fans in a bit of danger from hard hit foul balls, safety nets have gone up to cover more areas which are close to the action and less foul balls will be caught. Shorter games? More foul balls caught? fans at the game closer to the action? Stadium size? With a pitcher's park with long fences and a wide amount of foul territory, one would expect the games at those parks to go quicker? If that has been the case, I do not see it on the surface. Maybe when one delves into the data they can determine if these are indeed true game time variables.
Yeah I think there are a lot of variables but it is hard to argue with 25K more pitches thrown in a season. That's a clear increase without a concomitant increase in balls hit into play. Whether that causes a game to TAKE longer is debatable, but it certainly makes the game SEEM longer because there is more "space" (from 5.05 to 5.73 pitches) between the action events (balls hit to fielders in fair territory).
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