Mains: What the heck happened in June?
From SABR member Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus on July 6, 2018:
Last month, around this time, I wrote about what happened in baseball in May this year. A lot was said about trends in April compared to April 2017: Walks and hit batters up! Home runs down! More strikeouts than hits! As I’d demonstrated previously, though, batting and hitting performances in April are the least correlated to full-year results of the six months of the season. So I figured a look at May would give us a more sober view.
And it did. Batting was off, but not dramatically. Walks and hit batters reversed ground and declined a little in May compared to the prior year. There were almost as many strikeouts as hits, but not quite. The length of starting pitcher outings continued their long slide, and the number of relievers per game continued their long ascent. That kind of thing. Changes, but not huge ones.
I didn’t intend on making “what happened last month?” into a regular feature. I figured my May report would do it. April’s often an outlier. May is more representative.
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/41133/flu-like-symptoms-what-the-heck-happened-in-june/
Originally published: July 6, 2018. Last Updated: July 6, 2018.