Major League Baseball Batting Averages Increase By 16 Points, Game Times Decrease by 31 Minutes

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The new rules in Major League Baseball that are meant to speed up games and make them more exciting seem to be paying off. The batting average is 16 points higher, the number of stolen bases has increased by 30%, and each game is finishing an average of 31 minutes sooner than before. This is potentially the quickest pace of play since 1984.

At the beginning of the season, new rules were put in place such as restrictions on how teams can line up on defense, a pitcher’s timer, and bigger bases. Terry Francona, the manager of the Cleveland Guardians said “I think this is good for the game, to make sure these don’t interfere with how we play”. He added that while they cannot guarantee wins or losses each game, these new rules should not get in their way.

Our pitchers are doing okay right now, which is good because across the whole league players’ batting average is increasing. This year it’s been an average of .249 so far compared to last season’s start at .233. That earlier low number was probably because of cold and wet weather. But by the end of last year, the batting average had gone back up to .243 – the highest it’s been since 1968.

The batting average for right-handed batters is .253, which is higher than last year’s .236. Left-handers have a batting average of .245, which is also more than the .228 from last year. Toronto’s Matt Chapman has the highest batting average in the majors at .475, while Miami’s Luis Arraez and the St. Louis Cardinals have the second-highest batting average at .471 and .294 respectively.

Shohei Ohtani from the Angels’ team is one of the 15 players in the Major League to get two pitch clock violations in a single game – once when he was hitting and once when he was pitching. The New York Mets has the most violation with 10 players. About two-thirds of all pitch clock penalties went to pitchers. Pitch clock violations went up a bit last week compared to opening weekend but, on average, they only happen less than once per game.

Baseball games have become shorter in recent years. In the first 11 days of last year, the average time of a 9-inning game dropped to 2 hours and 38 minutes, which is on track to be the lowest it has been since 1984 when it was 2 hours and 35 minutes. C.J. Cron, a Colorado Rockies player, said it feels like there’s always something going on during games now so there isn’t much downtime in between plays.

So far, there have been 125 incidents of something called a “pitch clock violation” in 141 baseball games. That’s approximately 0.89 violations per game. In the first four days, the average number of violations was 0.82.

Out of all of these violations, 85 were caused by pitchers (68%), 32 were caused by batters (25.6%) and 4 were caused by catchers (3.2%). Additionally, there were two issues with batter timeouts and two problems with pitcher disengagements.

Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker knew that the pitch clock was going to work. He believes that more singles are being produced because balls get hit in different parts of the field and fewer are getting caught out. So far, no penalties have been given on shift restrictions and there has been an increase in stolen bases. The average is now up to 1.3 per game from 1.0 and the success rate is 79.6% compared to 74%.

Dusty Baker, manager of the World Series champion Houston Astros, said: “This season has been only a week in. It’s still too early to tell if it will be a year when players hit a lot or pitch well.”

In baseball, the rules have been changed so that when a pitcher is on the mound, he has 15 seconds (20 if there’s someone on base) to throw a pitch. Also, two fielders must be at either side of second base and everyone needs to stay inside the outer boundary of the infield. Players also agreed that it would be safer to increase each of the bases size from 15 inches-by-15 inches to 18 inches square.

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