MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

You're half right. Only guy in the American League. Pete Rose hit like .335 for the NL batting title.

 

Many fans -- maybe most -- realize that MLB lowered the mound in 1969 to bring offense back into the game, but why were the offensive numbers so bloody offensive in 1967 and 1968? It can't just be that Bob Gibson was awesome.

 

This certainly isn't all of it, but I have one factor. Teams would live with a .198-hitting middle infielder for the sake of defense. Catchers, too. You don't see that much anymore.

 

That's true.
But as to why the sudden decline occurred, possibility is the shift to night games. In the mid-1960s, night games outnumbered those in the day, and the lighting wasn't particularly great t the outset.

 

In before maumann or Jake reminds you that the 1968 Tigers gave 247 plate appearances to Ray Oyler at shortstop. The rundown of those 247 appearances: 21 singles, six doubles, one triple, one home run, 20 walks and 186 outs, of which 59 were strikeouts, 10 were sacrifices (seven bunts, three flys) and eight in which he grounded into a double play. Baseball Reference says they gave roughly similar amounts of ABs to Tommy Matchick and Dick Traczewski. They combined to hit .180.

That was so bad, Mayo Smith put outfielder Mickey Stanley in at shortstop for the World Series, where Stanley went 7-for-30 with one triple and it was considered the most brilliant tactical move in baseball history.

 

You know, I've never seen a SABR research paper that definitively explains that one-year aberration. No new stadiums were introduced between seasons and the strike zone was the same as it had been since 1962. The four additional expansion teams had been playing for at least six years, so it wasn't like an influx of mediocre players suddenly showed up. And the same pitchers who were good in 1967 were unhittable in 1968.

It wasn't just banjo-hitting middle infielders -- the entire American League hit .231 with a slugging average of .340. Harmon Killebrew hit 44 homers with a .269 average in 1967 and 49 with a .272 average in 1969. However he only played 100 games in 1968 and hit .210 with 17 home runs.

It was actually very much like 2022, in that while hits were down and strikeouts were up, there were still home runs. So I don't know if you can blame it on a deader ball that year? That's a topic that needs to be studied by somebody.

 

I guess you can say Cal Ripken was one of the first, but it really wasn't until A-Rod came along in the mid-1990s that anyone realized shortstop and second base could be an offensive position. Or at least one that could hit for power. I think A-Rod led people to rethink their approach to that position at all levels of baseball.

 

Well, before A-Rod there was Ernie Banks, and there was Joe Morgan. I think most people in baseball would've liked to get shortstops and second basemen who could hit, they were just rare. And often hitters who came up as middle infielders were shifted to outfield or first on the theory the demands of fielding around second base would negatively impact their hitting. Also, I am not yet caffeinated enough to look this up, but I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of poor hitting middle infielders and catchers in the majors right now. I know the Red Sox have some.
PS: I would think now that the Phillies have staggered into the playoffs, Rob Thomson gets NL Manager of the Year.

 

The lesson here (and with shifts and "swinging for the fences" and sacrifice bunts) is for much of its history the game was played very inefficiently, because of the power of "prevailing wisdom" and "everyone knows ..."

 

I think Showalter's going to have something to say about it.

 

Will the Mets late stumble hurt Showalter? Of course he's done a fine job, but Thomson took a 23-29 team as an interim, promptly saw it lose the NL MVP for two months, and got it into the playoffs. That's a remarkable performance.