Are we living in a new dead ball era?

You don’t have to look far to see how much baseball has changed in the past few years. We are far from the days of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds blasting 70 home runs, instead entering an age where pitchers don’t even sniff the MLB ERA title unless they are well below 2.00.

Looking at the extremes doesn’t tell the whole story, however. The top slugger in baseball this year was Chris Davis, who hit a very respectable 47 home runs and the top pitcher has had an ERA below 2.00 in nine of the last 22 seasons. Where a bigger break is found is when you expand the field. This year, the 10th best pitcher in baseball was John Lackey, with an ERA of 2.77, a number that was only surpassed once, in 2014, by the tenth best pitcher since 1992. In fact, that number would have made Lackey the top in baseball in 2006 and second in 2007.

Runs scored in Major League Baseball each year from 1901-2015 per plate appearance.

Moving into an even wider view the above graph shows the runs scored per plate appearance over the history of modern baseball. There are fairly obvious breaking points and the known eras can be picked out fairly easily. The period from 1901 through 1919 is known as the deadball era, but there are other trends well beyond that. These are broke down further in the chart below.

While runs per plate appearance may be unconventional, I find it to be the best way to judge productivity over time since there have been so many changes in number of games in a season and number of teams in the league. This instead judges how often teams score and teams were never better at scoring than during the period between 1920 and 1940. This may be surprising to some who want to blame steroids for all changes in offense in baseball history, but the truth is much deeper. While there were more players hitting massive amounts of home runs in the 1990’s, there were also more players.

In the top year for offense, 1930, there were just four players who hit more than 40 home runs compared to nine this year and 13 in 1998 and 1999, but there were also just 16 teams at the time. With nearly double the teams now and more games per season, it makes sense that there has been an increase in big home run hitters. That doesn’t mean that runs are being scored more efficiently, however.

Runs Scored divided by Home Runs in MLB since 1901.

Above is a chart that may make more sense to those with the typical view of the past. Comparing total runs scored to home runs, after being pretty even through 1919, there has been a steady climb over the last near century. What is interesting to note is that the biggest increase in home run based run production was during the 1950’s, after which things have generally be more even. In 2015, a new high was set with 23.8% of runs scoring from just the batter who hit the home run touching home. This does not include any runners on base already. Placing this with the numbers from earlier, offense has been down since 2009, particularly in 2014, but production from home runs is as high as ever.

This may be a further indication to where baseball is trending. Looking at a few of the top teams in baseball in 2015, the Blue Jays, Astros, Orioles and Yankees all hit over 200 home runs as a team with the Dodgers and Rockies hitting more than 185. None of these teams batted over .270 as a team and only Colorado and Toronto hit above .251. For comparison, in 1930 the Cubs lead the Majors in home runs with 171 with ten of 16 teams scoring over 870 runs and batting above .294.

Both on the individual and team level, runs are still being scored, although in a completely different way. With such a value placed on the home run, many are ignoring the fact that a large group of players who get on base often is often worth more than a small group of powerful players who either leave the ball park or head back to the bench. Even in this past season, three of the top ten teams in runs scored (the Red Sox, Royals and Diamondbacks) made it there with less than 165 home runs, but none of those would have made it without great on base skills. Speaking of the Royals and my love of charts…

Fielding Percent across Major League Baseball from 1901-2015.

Just as home runs make up a bigger part of offense than ever before, defense makes up a bigger part of preventing offense. While fielding percent doesn’t hold much weight among today’s sabr friendly audiences, an error is still an error. No, it doesn’t take into account range, but it is safe to say that today’s bigger, stronger and more well trained players have that covered as well. Better equipment made most of the big jump from 1901 through the early 20’s, but the fact is the number continues to climb. Competition has continually increased the standard on defense and what we are seeing on baseball fields in America right now is the greatest defensive product ever created.

There is one last piece to this puzzle that should explain why runs are down despite increased home run production.

MLB walk and K rates (Based on PA) since 1901.

This may be the most telling of all the charts. After strikeouts became an official statistic in 1910, they followed very closely the trend in walks though 1951 when batters walked in 9.6% of at bats and struck out in 9.7%. However, at the same time that we saw a dramatic increase in runs scored via home run and a decrease in overall scoring, there was a huge increase in strike outs.

Batters have always, from the beginning of modern baseball, walked at a rate between 7% and 11%. Since the 1970’s, that rate has been pretty steadily around 9%. Strike outs, however, have risen through the roof. While they did fall some in the 70’s and 80’s with a change in value towards speed and on base ability, they rose again in the 1990’s with the advent of the 60 home run star and continue to rise today. In fact, 2015 marked the the highest strike out rate in baseball history (20.4% of plate appearances) and saw the Cubs with 1,431 strike outs as a pitching staff, nearly surpass the Indians MLB record of 1,450 set just the year before.

What we have is an interesting combination of a lot of extremes. Players are striking out more than ever before in baseball history. They are also fielding better than ever and scoring runs at a rate comparable to the dead ball era and the period in the late 1960’s before expansion and the lowering of the pitching mound made it a hitters game again. Of those runs scored, a larger fraction are being scored from home runs than ever before. Is it any wonder that the Kansas City Royals are your World Champions?

The Royals have embraced this new age. They have one of the best defensive units in the history of baseball (second to the 2014 Royals at least) and utilize a deep bullpen to take advantage of match-ups and the general increase in strike outs across the league. They also have stepped away from the patient approach that was popularized by the Moneyball Athletics. There is a good point to this. A pitcher may or may not throw four balls before he throws three strikes in any particular at bat. Based on the last chart, that happens between 7% and 10% of the time. He will, however, almost certainly throw a strike in the at bat. If you put an early strike into play, there is about a 30% chance that you will be safe with a hit and an even greater chance that you will do something positive, like moving a runner or reaching on an error. By working deep into a count, a batter increases the risk of a strike out and while they also increase the chance of a walk or home run, that isn’t as valuable as simply putting the bat on the ball.

While the Cubs were busy leading the league in both pitching and hitting strikeouts (1,518 of the latter), the Royals were putting the ball in play, walking a league low 383 times and striking out just 973, the only team to strike out less than 1,100 times. Yes, the Royals got lucky a lot of times this season, but it was because they put themselves into a position to be lucky. Once a ball is in play, anything can happen. This is the value of the strikeout as a pitcher and the cost for a hitter.

Many teams saw the Royals success and didn’t completely understand it, leading to an increase in price for top relievers. That is a part of the equation, but not the whole thing. The philosophy is the important part. Use the relievers you have in situations where they are most likely to succeed. Have batters come to the plate with the goal of putting the ball in play rather than crushing a home run. Even with the increase in run scoring by home runs, they still are only the result in 2.5% of plate appearances (I’ll spare you the chart for this one) in the current age (since 2009). For a team to succeed offensively in this new age, an old school approach, like that in 1930, needs to be embraced. If not, I expect we could see total runs scored continue to drop for years to come. Of course, they could always just lower the mound again or expand to 32 teams. That would probably do the trick as well without any of the effort needed to change strategy.