Why traditional MLB stats no longer define a good offense

The MLB batting average is near a half-century low while pitch velocity has reached an all-time high. That’s the snapshot of baseball in 2024, and it’s a crucial one for fans who want to understand the modern game.

Of course, it’s not that black and white.

As velocities have soared, fans might expect hitters to keep pace, improving contact rates and power. After all, if pitchers throw harder, shouldn’t hitters hit it farther?

The answer is both yes and no. Heading into Friday's games, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees led MLB in average exit velocity (how fast, in miles per hour, a ball was hit by a batter) this season at 96 mph, according to Statcast . Unsurprisingly, Judge tops the majors in homers (43), slugging percentage (.707) and total bases (301).

Here’s the kicker: Judge has also struck out 131 times this season.

To put this in perspective, Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees led the majors in homers (47) and total bases (365) in 1926 and struck out just 76 times over 152 games. That was in an era when radar guns, which began appearing at ballparks in the late 1970s , were not even on the horizon.

Ruth's counterpart on the mound, Lefty Grove of the Philadelphia Athletics, led all MLB pitchers with 194 strikeouts in 1926. However, while we don’t know how fast Grove’s fastball was, it’s safe to say it wasn’t anywhere near today’s velocities.

Fast forward to 2024, and the average four-seam fastball for starting pitchers clocks in at 93.7 mph — 2 mph faster than 15 years ago. According to Baseball Savant , San Diego's Dylan Cease leads the majors with 181 strikeouts and averages a 97-mph average fastball.

It’s no wonder the MLB batting average hovered around .240 through the first two months of the season, the lowest since the (in)famous Year of the Pitcher in 1968.

So how do we evaluate what constitutes a “good” offense in today’s game?

Start with OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage), which adds a hitter’s ability to reach base to his power. The top five teams in OPS this season — Yankees, Orioles, Diamondbacks, Red Sox and Dodgers — are all playoff contenders.

Swap out the Red Sox for the Mets , and you have the top five in OPS+ , which adjusts OPS for park factors and the league’s average. Again, all playoff hopefuls.

Notably, only the Red Sox rank in the top five of total team strikeouts , suggesting that teams adept at reaching base and hitting for power tend to strike out less.

This reality underscores that fans can no longer rely solely on traditional stats such as batting average to determine if their team has a good offense. The game has evolved, and so must the way it's evaluated.

In 2024, all teams are hitting . 265 or less , but that alone doesn’t tell the full story. To truly assess a team’s offensive prowess, a mix of advanced stats and an understanding of the game’s evolution is essential.

It may not look pretty, and it certainly doesn’t resemble the game of decades past, but good offense exists — you just have to know where to look.