Why Batting Averages Are At All-Time Lows

September 12, 2025 paperbacklou Analysis 0
Carlos Rodon striking out Roman Anthony on August 24, 2025.

Major League Batting Averages have been 25 to 30 points lower across the board in the last few years.

The Evidence

  • In 2025 as of this writing on Sept 1, only 5 guys are batting .300 or more in the American League,
  • In 2024, only 4 guys batted .300 or more in the American League.
  • In 2023 only 4 guys batted .300 or higher in the American League.

Contrast this with the late 1990’s, when 26 to 28 guys batted .300 or higher in the American League each year.

  • In 2025 at this writing on Sept 1, only 18 guys are batting .273 or higher in the American League.
  • In 2024, only 15 guys batted .273 or higher in the American League.

It’s WORSE in the National League:

  • In 2025 at this writing only 2 (two) players are batting .300 in the National League — and both just barely at .300 on the nose — Freddie Freeman and Trea Turner.
  • In 2024 only 3 guys batted .300 or more in the National League; in 2023 only 5 guys.

Changes the Way You ‘Judge’ Hitters

This has to be taken into account when judging hitters. The hitters haven’t changed — the game has. If you see a guy batting .273 — that’s a .303 batting average in the old days. If you see a guy batting .248, think .278. For example:

  • Gleyber Torres slashed 15-63-.257 (.330 OBP) in 2024 — and he was the 2nd best offensive 2nd baseman in the AL. He is the best offensively at 2nd this year — slashing 14-63-.265 (.366 OBP) as of Sept 1. Add 30 points to translate his stats to the old days (before 5 years ago) and he slashed 15-63-.287 (.360 OBP) in 2024. Looks a lot different.
  • Jazz Chisholm Jr. is slashing 26-67-.238 (.339 OBP) so far this year — change that to 26-67-.268 (.369 OBP) and it tells the different relative story.
  • Oswaldo Cabrera of the Yanks — who ripped thru the minor leagues at an advanced pace from 2020-2022 — batted .211 in his first full MLB season in 2023, and slashed 8-36-.247 (.296 OBP) in 299 at bats in 2024 — but do a translation and he’s at .277 with a .329 OBP.
  • At the top end of the spectrum, Aaron Judge slashed 58-144-.322 (.458 OBP) in 2024 in a near Triple-Crown season — in the old days he’d have hit 58-144-.352 (.488 OBP) — similar to the kind of Triple Crown numbers Mickey Mantle put up in the 1950’s. Judge currently leads the AL in batting with a .324 average on Sept 1 — slashing 43-97-.324 (.443 OBP).

Take a look at the Al and NL overall batting averages through the years, provided by Baseball Almanac — and it shows a drop off of 25 points between 2024 and 1979. The .240 MLB batting average in 2024 was almost as low as the .237 of the fabled 1968 dead ball year, and lower than the .242 of 1967.

The Reasons Why

Some argue that it’s all because of Launch Angles — that MLB hitters are so concerned with homeruns that everyone’s swinging for the fences. This is not true — it might be part of the story for some hitters but there’s a lot more at foot.

1. Lively Ball — Like Playing Stickball with New Spalding

The current game reminds me of playing stickball with a new pink Spalding growing up.

  • A new pink Spalding used to (and presumably still does) MOVE when thrown. It made it almost impossible to hit — for even good hitters.
  • But when you hit it, it FLEW. Even for not-so-good hitters like me.

Jeff — the best hitter amongst our group — used to hit MOON SHOTS off me — he hit a couple 30 feet over the big Sycamores on the other side of the fence 150 feet away at the PS 41 school yard in Staten Island.

1a. Modern Ball Is Like a New Pink Spalding

Stickball with a pink Spalding was like today’s game — all strikeouts and homers, or ripping line drives that were almost impossible to catch one-bounce off the concrete — the ball would bounce off your hands. Baseball players with gloves can catch ripping line drives, especially if they are positioned exactly where the ball is hit (see computer-aided positioning, below).

A stickball game in Queens — photo by Ravi Misra, courtesy Wikipedia. They are not using a pink Spalding which is the preferred ball — they probably lost/ran out of Spaldings and are using something else.
You can still buy the lively pink Spalding at Target and Walmart, or online.

1b. Homeruns Are NOT Down

Homeruns decreased significantly after Steroids were ruled illegal, and Steroid testing began in the mid 2000’s.

To counter this it seems MLB put in a SUPER LIVELY ball — from 2017 to especially 2019 — when homer records were set across baseball and guys like Gleyber Torres and Cody Bellinger became 35+ homer guys. Circumstantial evidence is high that MLB must notched down the liveliness of their ball — it has not been as lively as 2019 but is still lively.

Homeruns are NOT down in MLB the last few years compared to historical totals (sans 2019) — everybody and their mother is still hitting 20+ homers a year. The elite homer hitters are ripping 4o to 60 a year. This is not the 1970’s.

Looking at overall HR’s in each league through the years tells the story — there around 500 more HR’s hit overall in MLB each of the last few years than 10 years ago — which had a HR lull after Steroids were made illegal and tests started being given out. Note that there have been 30 teams in MLB since 1998 when Arizona joined as an Expansion team.

In 2024 there were 5,443 HR’s — in 2011 4552. Stats again provided by Baseball Almanac:

1c. Pitching Ninja Is Cottage Industry

The lively ball has given rise to Pitching Ninja as a cottage industry. Each day, Pitching Ninja Rob Friedman (and now his team) post video snippet highlights to Twitter (x) of top pitches of the day.

Every day we’re treated to incredible pitches some that seem to defy the laws of physics as they MOVE — thrown by elite pitchers, and no-names, and veterans who have been in the league for years and seem to have found new ways to throw the ball.

A random example:

1d. New Balls Constantly Put in Play

Once the pink Spaulding aged a bit in a game — after being hit a few times or just the constant wear of being thrown against the paddleball wall — it would decrease in liveliness. It was a different game — it wouldn’t break as much and you could hit it for a single. Same of course goes for playing with tennis balls — lots of singles.

Not so with the current MLB balls. Major leaguers have said that one thing that has changed in the last few years is that new balls are constantly being put in play. Even if a ball is fouled off but remains in territory.

2. Pitchers Got Some of their Stick’em Back

In 2021, SpiderTach and all stickem substances like it were banned from MLB, as batters were complaining that pitchers were getting unearthly spin rates with the ball.

Initially, even Rosen was banned. That caused trouble for many pitchers during the 2021 season — as the ball slipped through their fingers and many had trouble with their control — for example, Aroldis Chapman.

But by 2022, Rosin was permitted again — with new rules that umpires now check pitcher’s hands as they come off the mound. Pitchers are allowed to clean their hands with alcohol.

During a Yankee-Toronto game on April 23, 2023, David Cone showed how Rosin along with a little bit of sweat (or alcohol from cleaning your fingers) provides quite a lot of stickiness — an amazing analysis:

Here is Pedro Martinez on the same subject:

3. Systematic Creation of Light’s-Out Pitchers

Baseball across the world has seen a systematic drive to build pitchers who can throw 95-102 MPH. It starts in Little League and High School in the US, and am sure it is also done in Japan and Central America.

I have 2 friends who had sons who were elite pitchers in High School — one in Virginia and one in Florida — and in both cases they told me that these days, everything is about getting the kid to throw 90 MPH. External coaching for proper ways to throw and physical training regimens are in place to make that happen.

Take a kid who is 6’5 or taller on top of it, and there is good reason to believe you will have a kid throwing 95 to 102 at some point — with a chance to make the big $ in MLB.

3a. Tampa Began Practice of Systematically Teaching Off-Speed Pitches

On top of that, and the lively ball, and the Rosin-alcohol stickem’, baseball teams are now ardently teaching pitchers an assortment of breaking-ball pitches to add to their arsenal.

Suzyn Waldman, announcer on the Yankees, pointed out earlier this season that Tampa started it, and now all teams are doing it.

In the old days pitchers taught other pitchers — Ron Guidry famously learned his slider from Sparky Lyle. Now it is systematic — every young pitcher coming up seems to have a 5-pitch arsenal, with a four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball (sinker), slider, sweeper, curveball, off-speed pitch, knuckle curve, etc.

4. Change to Baseball Strategy: Deep Bullpens

All of that has produced a surplus of pitchers who can throw 95-102 with a nasty breaking pitch or two.

4a. Strategy Changes: Batters Only See a Pitcher 2 Times in a Series

That has led to the rise of 9-man bullpens, where a team will have 2 lines of relief pitchers — similar to the way hockey uses lines of forwards.

In a 3-game series, a team will throw line 1 of 3 or 4 pitchers in game 1, line 2 of 3 or 4 pitchers in game 2, and then back to line 1 in game 3.

Each pitcher pitches 1 inning.

As hard as the pitchers are throwing, and as nasty as their off speed pitches are — professional MLB hitters will still hit them if they see them a 3rd time. But they never see them a 3rd time. They see them once or twice in a series that’s it.

4b. Rules Changes to Make AAA Team an Extension of MLB Roster

And MLB rules have changed to enable this — the 10-day IL and the flexibility of moving players between the major-league and minor-league rosters causes the AAA roster to become an extension of the MLB roster.

You often see a pitcher throwing a great performance — 3 or more innings of shutout ball — then being sent down to the minors to rest, before being re-added to the roster in several days.

MLB teams are thus able to carry a rockin-and-ready set of 9 pitchers in the pen.

4c. Minnesota Manager: We Got on Board the Bullpen Strategy

In an interview with Suzyn Waldman before a Yankee-Twins game midway through 2024, Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli told Suzyn that a key part of the team’s early success was that they got on board the 9-good-relief-pitchers-who-can-throw-95-100 bandwagon that many top teams were doing.

Just this year, the Yankee bullpen has featured 26 relievers, and current relief ‘lines’ consisting of combinations of:

and at times before that Ian Hamilton, Brent Headrick, Scott Effross, JT Brubaker, Jonathan Loaisiga, and 13 others.

Compare that to for example — the 1976 Yanks’ Pennant-winning team which had 8 relievers the whole season, headed by Cy Young winner Sparky Lyle and Dick Tidrow as setup man, with Grant Jackson and Tippy Martinez as middle inning relievers and that was about it. Twenty years later, the World-Series-Winning 1996 Yankees team had 18 relievers, headed by John Wetteland and Mariano Rivera, with a few key setup men.

5. Computer-Aided Positioning

And then to top it all off — you have Computer-Aided Positioning — made more lethal in the era of Statcast, and now AI — where teams are positioning defenders Exactly where players hit the ball. The shift has been outlawed — but players are still positioned perfectly to nab line shots.

6. Launch Angles & OBP

Which brings us back to launch angles, and On Base Percentage (OBP). Manager Aaron Boone said a few years ago he doesn’t look at batting average — he looks at On Base Percentage to determine who is doing well.

Which has always been the case amongst smart baseball heads, dating back to Gabe Paul and the 1970’s and before.

But remember players can’t work a walk if the pitcher isn’t afraid to throw pitches over the plate to them — and having a high batting average helps a player get pitched to guardedly.

Launch angles play a part — especially with the lively ball and all the HR’s. But you can’t tell me that most MLB players are not looking to raise the average to what used to be normal levels.

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