Here’s a thought that defines baseball in 2024: What if the whole sport suddenly turned into Bruce Bochy?
No, not Bruce Bochy, the future Hall of Fame manager. We’re talking about Bruce Bochy, the one-time roving backup catcher from the 1970s and ’80s.
We make this important observation because, as offense in MLB approaches historic lows these days, that Bruce Bochy comes to mind.
BATTING AVERAGE
2024 league AVG — .241
Bochy career AVG — .239
SLUGGING
2024 league SLUG — .390
Bochy career SLUG — .388
After stumbling upon this fascinating revelation, how could we not ask Bochy himself what he thinks this says about offense in 2024?
“I’d say the league is now seeing through my lens how hard hitting is!” the Rangers’ manager deadpanned, in that self-deprecating but dead-on way of his.
Well, isn’t that the truth? Perhaps you hadn’t noticed this trend. So take a look at the state of offense this season. It’s not a pretty picture. If baseball keeps up this pace, it would lead to …
• 39,404 hits — more than 1,400 fewer than last year.
• 21,078 runs — more than 1,300 fewer than last year.
• 5,079 home runs — almost 800 fewer than last year.
• 7,628 doubles — exactly 600 fewer than last year.
But let’s put that in better perspective. At this pace, we would also be heading toward …
• The fewest doubles in a season since before the 1993 expansion. That’s two expansions ago!
• The fewest homers since 2015, just before the baseball got noticeably livelier.
• The fewest hits per game (in a full season) since 1968.
• The lowest batting average on balls in play (.288) since 1992.
So here is what that means as you try to measure what a good offense or good hitter looks like in 2024:
The average hitter now has a Bochy-esque slash line of .241/.311/.390.
Only 25 hitters in the sport are on pace to hit 30 home runs. As recently as 2019, there were 58 of them.
The average lineup now gets just 8.1 hits per game. Yikes! We’ve seen only five full seasons worse than that in the modern era (1901-present) — and four of them were 1906-07-08-09! The other was 1968.