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MLB's decline in hitting is due to cameras, not steroid bans

Deacon923

Deacon923

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http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/baseball-is-boring-and-this-camera/379443/

I don't really care to watch baseball or keep up with it, but I love reading these kind of technical articles. From a scientific/technical standpoint it's such an interesting game that can be analyzed in so many ways. This is a really neat article about how since cameras were introduced, low strikes are called much more often, and pitchers have started throwing many more low pitches. The author posits that this has more to do with the decline in MLB offense than banning steroids.

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There is probably a synergistic effect between the two issues of banned steroids and cameras getting umpires to call more low strikes. Because the players are somewhat weaker, they are less able to do anything constructive with the low pitches they do contact. Contact may simply result in an easy out ground ball. Most players no longer can "golf" a low pitch into a line drive base hit.

Bats may also play a role. Old high quality wood ash trees are pretty much gone, either used up or killed by insects (ash borer). New growth ash and other wood species now used in bats may not have the properties of the old growth ash.
 
Article completely ignores expansion which is another HUGE factor. After expansion offense goes way up, harder to find major league quality pitchers than hitters.
 
Few thoughts:

First and foremost, fewer runs =/= "quantitatively less exciting". Watching really great pitching is awesome. There have been several stretches of great pitching and bad offense in the last few decades, and those in eras before we could appreciate pitch F/X and get a ton of great visuals. I get losing casual fans, or fans of sports where high scoring is the ultimate. But that's never really been baseball's thing.

And baseball doesn't have a star? Baseball has tons of stars. It had a triple crown winner quite recently.

I'd argue too that part of this decrease in offense, aside from the cameras contributing to umps' accountability, is pitching and pitch framing also in a great era right now. I'd also argue that the increase in called strikeouts is partially a reaction to players trying to be more patient at the plate trying to draw more walks or get into more favorable counts with more access to analytics and good data in the clubhouse. We know more now that it's not just XBH that score runs, it's guys simply getting on base. The article did address that fielding and better middle relief have contributed, but seems to ignore a good number of other factors involved.

Still a good read if only to see some staggering #s.
 
If umps started calling high strikes, offensive numbers would nosedive. Hitting 95+ at the letters is much harder than hitting a low pitch.
 
RJKarl said:
If umps started calling high strikes, offensive numbers would nosedive. Hitting 95+ at the letters is much harder than hitting a low pitch.
Click to expand...

Actually the bat covers the whole width of the plate in a plane with a high pitch. If the hitter guesses correctly about the height of the pitch above the plate when he makes contact, side to side break is less important on a high pitch because the bat is in a (near) horizontal position when it contacts the ball. On low pitches, the bat is angled through the strike zone, making side to side movement of the pitch more difficult to deal with. The plane of swing is 30 degrees plus or minus from horizontal on a pitch at the knees. Thus the batter would have to move the whole plane of swing to reach a pitch that was a few inches outside of the batter's "guessed at" arrival point.

Umpires are calling high pitches correctly and have been for a long time. Once upon a time, there was a difference between Am League low strikes and Nat League low strikes because the umpires used two different types of chest protectors. AL umps used the big "balloon" protectors and could not get as low to see the low pitches, hence called a lot of what are now low strikes, balls. NL umps went to the smaller chest protector umps use today much earlier, and were calling lower strikes then the AL counterparts.

The other part that was not discussed is the impact of the expansion of the strike zone, that is, the hitter now has to be prepared to hit in an expanded vertical space. Thus they need to be able to adjust their swing by another several bat thickness down, and at a greater angle, thus covering less of the side to side of the plate on a given swing.
 
RJKarl said:
If umps started calling high strikes, offensive numbers would nosedive. Hitting 95+ at the letters is much harder than hitting a low pitch.
Click to expand...

Do we have stats on this? I can't find any, but I'm not a baseball geek. Surely there are some stats about hits related to strike zone location?
 
The strike zone heat maps differ by player really.
 
Deaconblue said:
Actually the bat covers the whole width of the plate in a plane with a high pitch. If the hitter guesses correctly about the height of the pitch above the plate when he makes contact, side to side break is less important on a high pitch because the bat is in a (near) horizontal position when it contacts the ball. On low pitches, the bat is angled through the strike zone, making side to side movement of the pitch more difficult to deal with. The plane of swing is 30 degrees plus or minus from horizontal on a pitch at the knees. Thus the batter would have to move the whole plane of swing to reach a pitch that was a few inches outside of the batter's "guessed at" arrival point.

Umpires are calling high pitches correctly and have been for a long time. Once upon a time, there was a difference between Am League low strikes and Nat League low strikes because the umpires used two different types of chest protectors. AL umps used the big "balloon" protectors and could not get as low to see the low pitches, hence called a lot of what are now low strikes, balls. NL umps went to the smaller chest protector umps use today much earlier, and were calling lower strikes then the AL counterparts.

The other part that was not discussed is the impact of the expansion of the strike zone, that is, the hitter now has to be prepared to hit in an expanded vertical space. Thus they need to be able to adjust their swing by another several bat thickness down, and at a greater angle, thus covering less of the side to side of the plate on a given swing.
Click to expand...

Theory is nice, but reality is different. Whereas changing the chest protector did make a difference, letter level strikes are still not called that much.

As to the plane of a swing, most swings are grooved for lower pitches. Hitting a high pitch is much harder for most players because of this. Also. you don't throw high curves, sliders or change-ups. High pitches have to be harder or they get jacked. High fastballs are very hard to hit.

But as Townie says, heat zones are very different for players. What I don't get is why people don't pitch Trout high. He is really tough low.
 
I realize it is because of his BA, but I can't tell you how much I love that they used a picture of Ben Revere. If only the umps weren't calling those low strikes, maybe Ben could have two career home runs by now.
 
expansion is a good point. i've harped on it numerous times, but the point still stands.

the other thing, and ben revere is a good example, is the increasing value teams have placed on defense. this materializes in a few ways:

-shifts lower babips,
-better defenders mean lower babips,
-shifting value to defense lowers the offensive threshold to play.

so we see lower babips because of 2 reasons, AND we see worse hitters overall as we increase the defensive threshold to play.
 
TownieDeac said:
And baseball doesn't have a star? Baseball has tons of stars. It had a triple crown winner quite recently.
Click to expand...

Baseball has "baseball stars" but doesn't have any real stars. Lebron and Kobe are stars. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are stars. Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera are "baseball stars".
 
RJKarl said:
Something else is strikeouts per game have gone up. It used to be a much bigger negative to strikeout than it is today.

Take a look here:

http://www.sportingcharts.com/mlb/stats/team-strikeouts-per-game/1992/
Click to expand...

strikeouts being up is an ipso facto argument. strikeouts being up is a direct cause of offense declining. essentially the way i see it is there are three ways offense can be effected: defense independent statistics, defense dependent statistics, or batter quality.

batter quality is made up of two things: the total quality of the batter pool which would be dependent on steroids (as well as an innumerable amount of other factors including bats or conditioning or training techniques or approach) as well as the level of defense required to bat. in essence, there are 14 players that have 0 defensive value. in a vacuum, you could bat a guy here with no defensive ability. every other mlb hitter is required to at least be passable at defense. even ted williams probably wouldnt play if he couldnt catch a ball at 1b or dropped everything in the of. over the course of the last 10 years we've seen the whole of mlb put more emphasis on defense. as such, some mlb players have been moved to part-time or bench roles or just are no longer good enough. we've also seen these players roles replaced by the worst hitters in mlb. players are moving down the defensive spectrum and getting replaced by guys at the top of it (think corey hart moving to 1b and being replaced by a nori aoki). so even holding constant for the total quality of the batter pool, we'd expect the overall level of batter to have diminished.

from there, the defense dependent statistics are direct corollary. essentially, babip (or batting average on balls in play) is the easiest method to analyze the defensive dependent side of hitting: how many balls that hitters put in to field of play turn in to hits. due to the increased skill on the defensive end, we see less hits on balls in play (and this holds true looking at babip numbers over the years, well parks have a role in historical numbers but lets ignore that for now). not only are our defenders more talented individually, but the widespread use of shifts has suppressed hits on balls in play even further. this is a huge suppression on batting average even if we hold quality of batter and quality of pitcher constant.

the final aspect, defense independent statistics like strikeouts that rj mentioned as well as hrs and walks, is perhaps the trickiest to suss out and where the author's premise lies. his supposition that the low strike is causing the issue could very well be valid as we see hitters making less contact (and one could surmise weaker as well by the lower babip numbers). the other factors in play here, though, are pitcher quality, pitcher usage (match-ups essentially but also starters giving way to quality relievers rather than being seen for 3rd or 4th time), batter approach (eschewing higher BAs via more balls in play for higher OBP/SLG via more walks and more power on better pitches), etc.

essentially i think he gives an incomplete picture of why offense is down. i also think his assessment that less walk, walk, 3r hr is less exciting is bullshit. the sb and web gem are much better viewing than the stand around and slug era baseball of the 90s.
 
The stroke zone was officially lowered at the bottom in the late '90's.
 
deacphan said:
expansion is a good point. i've harped on it numerous times, but the point still stands.

the other thing, and ben revere is a good example, is the increasing value teams have placed on defense. this materializes in a few ways:

-shifts lower babips,
-better defenders mean lower babips,
-shifting value to defense lowers the offensive threshold to play.

so we see lower babips because of 2 reasons, AND we see worse hitters overall as we increase the defensive threshold to play.
Click to expand...

Th article only references data as far back as 1998. What does expansion have to do with decreased offense over that period of time? Not sure I understand.
 
Shorty said:
Th article only references data as far back as 1998. What does expansion have to do with decreased offense over that period of time? Not sure I understand.
Click to expand...

1998 was the peak of expansion. after no expansion for 16 years the mlb added 4 teams in 5 years culminating in the 1998 season. so we had the most new mlb players in 30 seasons which is a big reason for the increase in offensive output.
 
Is Yasiel Puig the biggest star in MLB or am I #LAbiased (edited to ignore jeter/arod)
 
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