Too much planning and writing for various manifestations of French film noir--and, frankly, the more mainstream versions of what we like to do here at BBB are kinda sorta covered in the sedimented river sludge of content at MLB.com, so we await the conclusion of our book on French noir and our two upcoming festivals in Los Angeles and San Francisco to actually make a reasonable effort to cover baseball in something resembling our old, er, "panache."
But if you happen to find yourself in LA or SF on the dates specified in our accompanying illustrations, however, do come see us--might just talk baseball for (kindly pardon the pun...) a "change of pace."Meanwhile, in the land of homeostatic homeritis, the August numbers are within moments of being final and official. Warmer weather propped batting average up a bit (.253), and HR/G rose slightly as compared with July (1.19 vs. 1.15), but a decline in walks (2.99/game as opposed to 3.26 in July) contributed to a slight decline in run scoring (4.46 per team per game as opposed to 4.7 for July).
When we say homeostatic, we mean it: the HR/G ratios for this year might be the most consistent across the months as any we've seen: 1.09 in April, 1.17 in May, 1.16 in June, 1.15 in July, 1.19 in August.
Here is the vital sign comp chart updated through August 30 [at right], measured in percentage change from the 2018 month in question to its 2017 counterpart.
In case you're wondering, September has tended to produce HR/G at a 5% lower rate than the overall yearly average over the 2000-2017 time frame. That would suggest that the September HR/G rate will clock in at around 1.09.
