MLB Notes For May 3rd

A month into the baseball season and we are learning things! Every season is different, but it’s remarkable how different this one is from the last. It’s the difference between an apple and theoretical particle physics. The Angels might be good. The Red Sox might be bad! The Reds are complete garbage… okay, some of this stuff was predictable. 

To the notes!

Nobody can hit anymore

If you’ve been watching games, you might have noticed the scores are lower. You might have noticed, but you might not have. After all, any given game can end 8-7. But in fact hitting this season has taken a nosedive off a cliff and Wile E. Coyote style slammed into the pavement thousands of feet below. 

In actuality, it’s not technically the hitting that has been the culprit. This season the league is hitting .233 which is 11 points below what the league hit last season. That’s a big difference, but it’s not utterly ridiculous. On-base percentage has fallen nine points from .317 to .308, a noticeable difference but again, nothing truly unprecedented. 

The huge difference comes in the league’s power numbers this season. The league is slugging .370, down 41 points from last season’s .411. Part of that can be explained by the month. The ball typically travels less distance in the cooler air, so slugging percentages typically click up as we head towards summer. But this is a 41 point difference. 

In fact, if you compare April of last season to this season there are some remarkable similarities. Last April the league hit .232. This year they’re hitting .233. Last April the league’s on-base percentage was .309. This season it’s .308. Then you get to slugging. Last April the league slugged .390. Compare that to the .370 the league is slugging now and you get a sense for the issue. 

Why this is happening is a bit out of my league, but MLB has added humidors to a whole bunch of major league ballparks in order to store the baseballs in a more humid environment. That could be the culprit. Or perhaps every major leaguer took a step back offensively. Hmm… 

The Return of Mike Trout

When I say every major leaguer, of course I’m not talking about every single major leaguer, just a lot of them. And I’m definitely not talking about Mike Trout. Great as he is, Trout has been suffering from injury issues for a while now. I was surprised to learn he hasn’t played more than 140 games in a season since 2016. He did play most of the shortened 2020 season (53 out of 60 games) but he only played 36 of the full 162 games last season. At age 30 and with those injuries holding him back in recent seasons, there was some concern that Trout wouldn’t be, well, Trout any more. 

Worry no more, friends. Guess who is leading MLB in hitting? I’ll give you 17 guesses, but first here’s a hint: it’s Mike Trout. The three time MVP is setting himself up for a fourth with his 1.180 OPS, which includes a .766 slugging percentage, effectively twice the league average. Read that again. Mike Trout is slugging more than twice the league average. 

The Orioles Successful Pitching

If you go to FanGraphs and sort by team pitching, a few of the usual suspects are at or near the top. Milwaukee, the Dodgers, the Giants, and a few others. Then, at number seven, just ahead of the Tampa Rays, you find the Baltimore Orioles. 

Yes, it’s early in the year and things still might implode, but there was never a time, and I mean never, not a week, a game, or a minute, when the 2020 or 2021 Orioles were a top 10 pitching staff. And yet, a month plus into the 2022 season, here they are. I will admit here and now in front of you and your deity that I did not predict this to happen!

How are they doing it? That’s probably a subject for more words than I can muster here, but from a macro perspective, it’s hard not to notice a few things. First, they’re pitching as well on the road as they are at home. So this is not just a function of moving the fences back at Camden Yards. Second, there are far, far fewer blown tires on the pitching staff. Last April, there were five pitchers with ERAs over 7.00. This season there are three. Those pitchers have combined for 19.2 innings, whereas last season’s bad pitchers threw 55 innings. So things are better, more competent at least. And this is before DL Hall and Grayson Rodriguez make their appearances. Could there actually be *gulp* room for improvement?

A Potential Collapse of the Red Sox

The Red Sox probably weren’t anyone’s World Series pick, but they were expected to be an above average team of competent baseball players. That hasn’t quite been the case, at least not yet. The Red Sox look more like the Orioles, Rangers, or A’s, which is to say more like a rebuilding team than a contending one. 

The irony of that is if the team doesn’t play better, management may decide that rebuilding is actually the way to go. The Red Sox have a large portion of their roster set to reach free agency after this season, a group that includes Nathan Eovaldi, JD Martinez. Enrique Hernandez, Jackie Bradley Jr., Christian Vazquez, Michael Wacha, and Rich Hill. Additionally, star shortstop Xander Bogaerts is expected to exercise an opt-out in his contract to become a free agent. That’s five of the nine in the lineup, plus three starting pitchers. That’s a lot of potential turnover. 

And there’s more: third baseman Rafael Devers will be a year away from free agency after this season and if the team isn’t able to extend him, and they weren’t this off-season, he would be a prime trade candidate. As would Bogaerts for that matter. Logically speaking, there’s no sense holding on to players who will leave the organization. We’ve already seen Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom trade superstar Mookie Betts, so we know he isn’t afraid to deal away his star players if he doesn’t think they will re-sign in Boston. As the Red Sox made little effort to re-sign any of those players during this recently completed off-season, it would seem that is the case.

All of which is to say if the Red Sox don’t pick it up soon, the trade deadline might be their last stand.