Back in 1988, when offensive levels were a bit lower than they are now, when batters swung at the first pitch in their plate appearances, they missed about 54% of the time.As the chart shows, that number drifted upward slowly over the following ten years, had an odd spike in 1998 (expansion year "swingitis"??), then settled in at between 55--56% until 2006, when it began to nose up again.
We passed 58% in 2011 and hit 59% last season; so far in '14, hitters are down just a touch from that all-time high. (At least we think it's the all-time high...we'd need to have pitch-by-pitch data for a year like 1968 in order to be absolutely sure.)
We'll come back and look at a couple of other nuances about results on and after the first pitch in just a bit.
