WE are one-thirds through the second month of baseball in 2024, and the uptick we tend to see in offensive production relative to "the cruelest month" (T.S. Eliot fans, prick up your ears...) has yet to materialize...
Now, as we said, we're only a third of the way through May, so things can still change quite a bit, but here's what we are looking at in terms of the major monthly performance indicators from 2021 until now:
...and thus far in 2024, run scoring for May is down by more than five percent. In fact, all the salient measures are down, and many by rather significant amounts.
We've been telling you for some years now that some kind of reckoning was coming due to the "launch angle" intervention into baseball's "theory of offense" (such as it is...), and despite the handwringing about pitcher injuries that dominated various flavors of media attention last month, pitchers still seem to have retained the upper hand.
Do note, though, that odd swings in the April data are more likely due to the very unpredictable differences in weather conditions that can occur during this month. Take note that the highest monthly R/G average out of this four-year sample occurred in last year's warmer-than-usual month of April, and that the slight May decline was actually the second highest monthly R/G value of those shown above.
But the pattern this May, with some lingering cooler conditions in the upper Midwest and in the Northeast still in play, shows us that the pitchers are, for now at least, retaining their control over things, and they are managing to curtail the early-season HR/G rates that were particularly high in 2021 and 2023.
Some pundits suggest that pitching is now so good that it must be reined in somehow, but it's telling that they pay only fleeting lip service to the notion that the game should more actively look for ways to add more dimensionality to offense, as opposed to merely treating the symptoms. This, of course, is what happens when the world is in a phase of its existence where it's besieged by quackery, and experimentation is not permitted to play out in real time in front of the audience. While the pace of the game has been improved, its underlying dimensionality is still suboptimal: it's actually possible that we are moving toward a new variant of a "crisis in offense" that continues to cast a forboding shadow over the game. Just like a virus, it's hard to predict whether it will turn into a pandemic, but the warning signs do seem to be gathering momentum.
As always, we'll check back on this when we move closer to the summer, with a look at how the next three weeks go as we continue to cast a cold eye on baseball's offensive topography. (W.B. Yeats fans, take note!)
