In the closing days of spring training, the Yankees and Orioles used Aaron Judge and Chris Davis, respectively, as leadoff hitters. I’ll let that sentence sink in.
Although the leadoff slot has become more inclusive in recent seasons, evolving away from the speed-centric archetype that predominated for decades, Judge and Davis, who combined for 10 stolen bases and 500-plus pounds last season, were still unorthodox choices, even in a low-stakes spring training environment. Neither hitter has ever started a regular-season game in the leadoff slot, but both of their managers are at least allowing for the possibility that they’ll do so this season.
Normally, one would want big boppers like Judge and Davis lower in the lineup, where they could more often drive in two or three runs with one blow. In baseball’s current run environment, though, this leadoff experiment makes some sense. Judge and Davis are good at getting on base, and they aren’t their teams’ sole sources of slugging. Not only are batters hitting homers at record rates, those homers are distributed more evenly than ever across the league. If Judge and Davis drive in fewer runs, their teammates will pick up the slack; there’s plenty of power to go around. In fact, both of their teams are projected to break MLB’s all-time team home run record in 2018. So while the second, third, or fourth spots might be more conventional, what’s the harm in having the AL’s home run kings from two of the past three seasons set the table instead?
Regardless of whether Judge and Davis take these spring training trials into meaningful games, the fact they’ve dabbled at leadoff at all is symptomatic of a sport that’s exploring new extremes. Last year, MLB hit a new all-time-high home run rate, breaking a record that was set the preceding season. Meanwhile, MLB players set a new strikeout-rate record for the ninth consecutive year. For the first time in baseball history, more than a third (33.5 percent) of plate appearances ended with one of the “three true outcomes”—a walk, strikeout, or home run.
At this time last year, it was easy to anticipate the continuation of those trends without extrapolating from previous seasons or consulting a psychic. All it took was a little attention to spring training.
Spring training means well, but it wears out its welcome: The longer it lingers, the more it makes us want to watch baseball that counts and the greater the risk that it will deprive us of a player and spoil a season before it starts. It does, however, have one saving grace: the glimpse it gives us of the season to come. As go league-wide spring training stats, so tends to go the rest of the season. And based on what we’ve seen so far, the rest of the league’s game is gravitating toward Rangers slugger Joey Gallo, who set the all-time single-season record—are you starting to sense a pattern here?—for “three true outcomes” percentage last season.
To review: Although individual players’ spring stats are beset by small-sample fluctuations, league-wide spring stats and regular-season stats are tightly interlinked. The table below lists correlations between spring training and regular-season rates for seven outcome stats from 2006-17 (the whole span of spring data available via MLB.com), excluding pitchers from the regular-season samples wherever possible (because pitchers don’t bat in spring training). Correlations can range from 0 to 1, with 0 representing no relationship and 1 representing a relationship in which the two stats move in tandem. Most of these stats are self-explanatory; of the less familiar, HR/Contact is the percentage of non-strikeout at-bats that end in homers, while GO/AO, or the ratio of ground outs to air outs, is the closest we can come to batted-ball stats for spring training.
Spring Forward
The correlations among all of these stats are strong, which indicates that we can generally trust spring performance when forecasting what’s in store for the season. Maybe that’s not so surprising: Most of the players who produce those stats are the same, although they stop wearing suspenders once the regular season starts.
I’ll end the suspense: Just like last year, baseball appears to be bound for another record-breaking season, in more ways than one. Home runs are sexy, so let’s start there. The graph below displays the spring training and regular-season home run rates for each season since 2006.
Last year’s spring home run rate rose only slightly compared to 2016’s, but the regular-season rate still set a new high. This year’s spring home run rate is easily the highest in our 13-season sample, and the increase relative to last year is almost as large as the one from spring 2015 to spring 2016, when speculation about a juiced ball began. There’s no indication at all that baseball’s brain trust has deadened the ball in response to recent scrutiny about its role in the dinger deluge.
Over the past 12 springs, the regular-season home run rate has been 12.2 percent higher, on average, than the spring rate. If that difference holds this season, the regular-season home run rate for non-pitchers would rise to 5.2 percent of non-strikeout at-bats, eclipsing last year’s 5.0 percent. It’s not guaranteed that there will be more homers hit in 2018 than last year’s total of 6,105, because there have been years when the spring rate rose without a corresponding climb in the regular-season rate. Given the magnitude of the increase this spring, though, it seems likely that the league will surpass 6,106, barring a significant change to the ball or in players’ approach.
Speaking of players’ approach: While it’s possible that the ball is continuing to shape-shift in ways that would make it fly farther, the ongoing increase in home run rate almost certainly stems in part from hitters’ attempts to tailor their swings to the ball’s more fly-ball-friendly behavior. More and more converts are flocking to the banner of the air-ball revolution, adopting steeper swing planes in pursuit of loftier launch angles. (Even historically inept hitter Jeff Mathis is getting in on the act.) Although the evidence for league-wide shifts in batted-ball direction is easier to trust when the source is Statcast, as opposed to comparatively imprecise stringers sitting in press boxes, this spring’s recorded ratio of ground outs to air outs is at its lowest ebb since 2007, suggesting that players may be hitting more liners and flies for every ground ball.
The combination of uppercut-oriented swings and hitters who are hacking as hard as they can is a recipe for more strikeouts. Sure enough, the percentage of plate appearances that conclude with Ks is continuing its seemingly inexorable ascent.
As pitchers stay away from the zone and try to trick hitters into chasing, walk rate has rebounded, too. This year, the spring training walk rate has reached its highest level since 2009. Add all of those homers, strikeouts, and walks together, and we get the highest TTO rate yet, inching ahead of where last season’s stood during the regular season.
Although hit by pitches technically aren’t a “true outcome,” the spring plunk rate has also attained its highest level on record, perhaps reflecting pitchers’ willingness to throw inside in an effort to avoid the most home run–prone parts of the plate (which, when paired with ever-rising pitch speeds, could endanger hitters’ heads). Balls put in play are retreating on all fronts.
Despite all of the upheaval in the individual components of offense, spring scoring is almost unchanged from last year. We’re not necessarily heading for a much higher-scoring game, but we are heading for one where less and less of the scoring results from balls that don’t fly over the fence.
Oddly, Gallo himself is bucking both the walk- and K-rate trends, drawing only four free passes and striking out only 11 times in 59 spring plate appearances. (He has homered five times.) But his leaguemates are more than making up for his atypical TTO rate. Dingers, walks, and whiffs aren’t necessarily an existential threat to the sport; the game never stays the same from season to season, and the brand of baseball that appeals to each spectator is a matter of personal preference. There could come a point at which everyone agrees that the lack of balls in play has made baseball boring, but MLB could take steps to counteract any one of these threats in time to avert disaster.
On the eve of Opening Day, it seems safe to say this: If the homers and strikeouts that suffused recent seasons weren’t to your taste, baseball in 2018 will be even more bitter. That said, if Rob Manfred is right when he insists that most fans love long balls and Ks, MLB is about to be a bigger hit than ever.
Spring training stats are current through March 26, 2018.
