Don’t overreact to early pitching dominance
The 2015 regular season is just a few days old, but it’s never too early for overreactions. Given the dominance of pitching in recent years, it’s easy to look at the results of the first 23 games, throw your hands in the air and say, “here we go again.”
Nightengale is right, of course. About 40 percent of games played this season have ended in shutouts. While Nightengale doesn’t come out and say it in the tweet, that statement seems to imply that pitching is dominating again.
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At a glance, scoring appears to be down in the early going. Teams have averaged just 3.61 runs per game this season. That’s down from 4.07 runs per game in 2014. Those figures don’t adjust for the time of year, though. If scoring is down at the start of each season, that could explain why we’re seeing skewed numbers now.
Last season, teams scored 3,412 runs over 810 games started in April, according to Baseball-Reference.com. That results in an average of 4.21 runs per game. That 4.21 figure is consistent with the past couple seasons, actually. Teams averaged 4.26 runs in April in 2013, 4.16 runs in 2012 and 4.29 runs in 2011.
A quick glance at those figures might lead you to conclude that pitching is more dominant than ever. That line of thinking ignores some key factors from the first couple of games.
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For one, every team is using their best pitchers in these games. Scoring is going to be down when starts by Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez and David Price factor heavily into the formula. Once teams start pushing their fifth starters out there, scoring is going to rise.
That doesn’t even account for injuries. At this point in the year, most pitchers are still healthy. As the year wears on, and players go down, they’ll be replaced by minor-league depth. Those guys are usually in the minors for a reason, and it’s because they don’t have what it takes to sustain success in the majors.
On top of that, weather plays a role. Jeff Zimmerman of FanGraphs.com found that scoring typically increases in warmer temperatures. Eleven of the first 23 games have been played in temperatures below 60 degrees, where scoring remains fairly low.
Yes, nine games have ended in a shutout, but we’ve also seen four teams score in the double-digits, and four other teams notch at least seven runs. We’re just dealing with far too small a sample to take away anything useful from these contests.
So, is scoring down? Right now, technically, the answer is yes. But that’s not very helpful. We’re 23 games into the season. Crazy things happen. Aces pitch well.
Given recent trends, it’s easy to proclaim that offense is dying. While that could wind up being true, we haven’t seen nearly enough to make that statement right now.
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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
