Why the offensive explosion?

[iblemetrician]

We all know about the increase in run production over the last couple of decades. Has anyone tried to break down its sources - stronger hitting, weaker pitching / fielding, or more hitter-friendly ballparks? They are all plausible theories, and presumably may each have had a role.

[StillFlash]

No matter what level you play on, Little League thru the majors, if hitting and pitching are in balance you will get the same results of ba, era, etc. You get the "offensive explosion" when some variables are altered in favor of the hitter.

I was the statistician for a summer college league in Johnstown Pa from 1978-1990. In my first seaosn, we had a schedule of 40 seven inning games from Memorial Day to Aug 1, just about 65 days. Pitchers were used as much or more than they were in the majors at that time. In a 40 game/65 schedule, we had one pitcher who made 16 starts, 15 complete, and 4 relief appearances for 117 ip, seeting the league record with 199 k's. First inning of the playoffs he blew out his elbow. The batting champion hit .388. Managers were scared into not overusing their pitchers, and within 3 season,s most starters only went once a week. Another guy who averaged 18k per 9 ip only made 7 starts, 49 ip, in 35 games. Also, metal bats became fully integrated. The 1982 batting champ hit .500, and runs overall were way up because those innings had to be pitched by lesser pitchers.

To the majors -
1. Expansion - 4 teams were added in the 1990's, 100 players at any one time in the majors

2. Increased of bullpen size - in the 1970's, most teams had 5 relievers...the closer, the setup guy, two swing men who made spot starts, and the blowout guy. Some only used 4. By 1990, it was no more than 6. Today, 12 or even 13 men pitching staffs are standard.

From 1991 to 2007, the number of hitters with 50 or more ab in a season grew 12%, while the number of pitchers facing 50 or more batters grew 28%. Where do these extra pitchers come from? The minor leagues. Even with increased overseas signings, the size of the talent pool has in my opinion not kept pace with the growth in roster spots.

3. Decreased use of starting pitchers - In the 1970's, it was not uncommon for quality starters to make 40 or even 41 starts. By 1990, 36 was standard (every fifth day for 180 days). Now 34 or even 33 is usually the most any, even the ace, will start. These missing starts have to be given to lesser pitchers.

4. Smaller ballparks - I have calculated multi year park factors for each version of each ballpark from 1957-2007. In 1977, Fenway Park was the 2nd (of 14) easiest AL park to hit a homer in (behind Tiger Stadium) with a 1.01 factor. In 1998, Fenway Park was last (14 of 14) in the AL with the same 1.01 factor. In 2007, the AL hr factor was 1.16, NL 1.07. The ballparks built in the 1960's and 70's tended to be much larger than those they replaced, but when they themselves started being replaced in the 1990's, most of the brand new parks went back to smaller.

I did not mention PEDs, because they can be used by both pithcers and hitters, so it is unclear whether this is something that can give hitters an overall advantage.

[Tango Tiger]

Explosions can only happen when some drastic one time event occurs. It's not a long-term change of landscape. If it was, then you'd see a long-term trend. What happened between 1992 and 1994 was an explosion.

The most likely culprits are: sudden change in ball composition, sudden change in strike zone, sudden change in weather, sudden introduction of new ballparks.

Read this: http://highboskage.com/juiced-ball.shtml

[chrispw1]

Also, I think another factor may be players lifting weights which until about 20 years ago was actually discouraged.

[Tango Tiger]

No, no, no! It's an explosion, not a long-term trend. It was sudden and dramatic. Something happened practically overnight. It's not like everyone in the 92 off-season who wasn't lifting weights decided to start lifting weights. Those kinds of things would have staggered acceptance over a period of years.

[plask_stirlac]

MLB put a black marker on the ball and it shows spin.

Ballparks aren't really smaller, that is kind of a false assumption. The ball goes farther. That and PETCO/Safeco are prisons for hitters pretty much canceling Citizen's and Ameriquest. Coors was out there but is now settling.

Also hitting backdrops are probably better.

The strike zone has narrowed.

Bats are better.

Video allows hitters to watch pitchers extensively. Pitchers can try to counter and hit the guy's weak spots but they have to see more footage and still execute the pitch. Knowledge would help hitters more.

Hitters are working to drive up pitch counts and get into soft middle relief. In the 1980s and earlier there were fewer pitches per PA, sluggers swung and so did slap/liner guys. They did have more IP and total pitches, but not 140 every game like they suggest sort of.

[brett]

No, no, no! It's an explosion, not a long-term trend. It was sudden and dramatic. Something happened practically overnight. It's not like everyone in the 92 off-season who wasn't lifting weights decided to start lifting weights. Those kinds of things would have staggered acceptance over a period of years.

I think that the weight lifting thing was an "explosive" event.

I have studied trends in sports training over the years and weight training really became suddenly integral in college baseball programs in the mid to late 80s. A lot of college programs added weight rooms just for the baseball team around then.

Same general change at the highschool level.

In 1990 the average healthy adult male between 18 and 35 bench pressed 132.5 pounds. Today the average is 182.5 pounds.

The suppliment industry exploded around 1990 (and I don't mean illegal stuff) so really while it is a combination of "trends"-working out, availability of weights, acceptance, knowledge, supplimentation and popularity of strength activities like the world's strongest man, they all fed each other and produced a rather rapid change in baseball.

And they even conspired in baseball itself because up until about 1989, the model for a hitter was to hit .300, and that as far as power, you either had it or you didn't. Then people see the impact of power on the game and they throw out the "art of .300" mantra rather quickly.

Also, hitters realized that they could hit for power and still bat around .300 at the same time, which was rare from '72-'89. This occured because the idea of a rotational trigger, and basically hitting the ball hard, and the same way every time set in.

[Ubiquitous]

I know the Sillyball paper would call anybody stupid for challenging it but even they cannot argue that it was a sharp break. Yes I know they claim that but they can't even pin it on a certain season. It eithe happened before 1993 or after 1993 but they don't know which. Well, to me if you don't know which then it isn't a sharp break. The whole article reads like a summation of one side of a heated argument.

I do think he/they didn't really touch on the stadium aspect of that era. In the era of the sharp break a lot of new stadiums came online. The author wants you to believe that the only reason for the change is the ball and everything is stupid to bring up but I don't think it is 99% ball, 1% everything else. It might be 60% ball, 40% everything else or 70/30 or whatever. I don't think it is stupid to say that the ball wasn't everything.

I also think his glossing over the testing of the ball is rather naive.

[Tango Tiger]

The pre-93 or post-93 would be an indication of either sampling, or that it took 2 years to take hold. That is, say it was a sudden change in strike zone. It might take some time for the umps and/or players to come to that adjustment. Same with the juiced ball. By the time you realize the ball may have been juiced, you start to change your approach a bit to take advantage of that. The "sudden" doesn't have to be in one day, like lowering the pitching mound by a few inches.

It could of course work in combination of things, but it happened somewhere between the off-season of 1992 and the pre-season of 1994.

So, while the weight-lifting might have been a huge spurt, is there any reason to think that it all happened within that time frame? You'd have to say that *all* players who weren't doing it, young and old, started doing it in that time frame.

Certainly, weight-lifting, and the loss of the gazelles being replaced by the thumpers, would have been a significant event, but it would have happened over a period of years. It adds something, but not the sudden event that occurred around 1993.

[Ubiquitous]

The pre-93 or post-93 would be an indication of either sampling, or that it took 2 years to take hold. That is, say it was a sudden change in strike zone. It might take some time for the umps and/or players to come to that adjustment. Same with the juiced ball. By the time you realize the ball may have been juiced, you start to change your approach a bit to take advantage of that. The "sudden" doesn't have to be in one day, like lowering the pitching mound by a few inches.

It could of course work in combination of things, but it happened somewhere between the off-season of 1992 and the pre-season of 1994.

So, while the weight-lifting might have been a huge spurt, is there any reason to think that it all happened within that time frame? You'd have to say that *all* players who weren't doing it, young and old, started doing it in that time frame.

Certainly, weight-lifting, and the loss of the gazelles being replaced by the thumpers, would have been a significant event, but it would have happened over a period of years. It adds something, but not the sudden event that occurred around 1993.

But who is to say that 1992 wasn't simply a down year and that the overall trend that we would see later was starting in 1992 or 1991? We all know many factors contribute to scoring, we also know that yes weather can play a role in a single season.

for instance the 1950's was the big offensive era before the 1990's came along but if we used the sillyballs graph we see a pretty big spike in 1951 or so followed by a two year drop then spiking again until the 60's changes. So in the 1950's we either have a ball change as the author states for the 90's but then we see a perilous drop. Was the ball still lively or did something else happen?

[stevebogus]

If you really look at the the data it is clear that something changed significantly in 1993, and the full effects were felt in 1994. It is remarkably similar to the offensive explosions of 1919-1920 and 1909-1911. And in each case I believe the ball is the reason.

Much has been written about the birth of the "rabbit ball" era in 1920. That is the first season Babe Ruth hit 50+ HRs, up from his record 29 in 1919. But this coincided with the spitball ban and the mandate to enforce rules regarding defacing the baseball. Umpires were allowed (and encouraged) to remove dirty, damaged, or doctored baseballs from play. Technically it was against the rules to deface the ball even before 1920, but this was rarely enforced. The 1920 and later baseballs were probably not any livelier than the 1919 baseballs. Baseballs during the "Great War" were made from inferior materials due to wartime shortages (this would also occur during WW2), so there was a big change between 1918 and 1919. Proportionally, the change from 1918 to 1919 was larger than the 1919 to 1920 change.

To a large degree this was a replay of what happpened from 1909-1911, when the Reach baseball was introduced. The Reach ball was in play during the 1910 World Series, and may have been used late in the 1910 regular season as well. The Reach ball had a cork core, replacing the rubbber core of earlier baseballs. Home runs were extremely rare events at that time. Still, from 1909 to 1911 the HR rate doubled. More significantly the BABIP increased from about .270 to around .300 in that span. After 1911 the hitters advantage slowly eroded. This was probably due to more pitchers utilizing the spitball/scuffball/shineball/mudball/cutball etc., as well as post-1914 materials shortages affecting baseball manufacturing.

Between 1992 and 1994 HRs increased by about 40%. Proportionally, the change from 1992 to 1993 was larger than the 1993 to 1994 increase. More significantly, the HR rate remained high. At the same time the BABIP increased from around .290 to over .300. While this may not seem like much it is very significant. BABIP is one of the more stable rates in baseball history, fluctuating very little. When it shifts it is an indication that something important has changed. From 1969-1992 It ranged from a low of .275 (in 1972, a very good pitchers year) to a high of .292 (in 1987, one of the great HR years). In 1993 It was at .297, the highest level since 1936. Since 1993 it has ranged between .296 and .305.

So what exactly happpened? I thing there was a change in the core, just as in 1910. Several years ago some researchers at the University of Rhode Island obtained some baseballs from different seasons, took them apart, and tested the cores. They found that the modern baseball cores were 33% livelier than those from 1960s-1980s era baseballs.

http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/html/02-0611.html

MLB commissioned their own tests in 2000, but limited the testing to baseballs from 1998 through 2000. Not surprisingly they found almost no differences between the MLB baseballs. Minor league baseballs were also tested, and were found to be about 2% less lively. The minor league baseballs have a different core. The report can be viewed here:

http://webusers.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nath...udy-report.doc

The tested baseballs were within the allowable coefficient of restitution (COR), but close to the top of the allowable range. I suspect that pre-1993 baseballs would have fallen somewhat lower in the acceptable range

The timing of the offensive explosion indicates that it was under way well before the strike. Baseballs were NOT made more lively to bring fans back to the game. I suspect that MLB officials were completely unaware that the baseballs were "hotter" than before. Rawlings, who assembles the baseballs, probably noticed a difference. They regularly test the baseballs. But since the balls were still withing the specified COR range they didn't see it as a problem. The manufacturer of the baseball cores (pills), the Muscle Shoals Rubber Company, claims that there has been no change to the way they manufacture the pills (since 1948). But I do have some small experience in manufacturing. Suppliers change their products without informing you, some suppliers go out of business and new sources must be found, etc. I have a hard time believing that over a 60-year span that this hasn't happened at least a few times.

Baseball officials have consistently denied that the baseballs are any different. I think the evidence strongly indicates otherwise. I also think that the HR boom is NOT primarily driven by steroid and HGH fueled athletes, but by the COR of the baseballs in play. I'm not saying steroids don't have an effect. But I do think that effect is being exaggerated. Steroids were around before 1993 but players weren't breaking HR records then.

[Tango Tiger]

Ubi, if it was just one year, then it could be explained by many factors. But, the sustained jump is what makes me believe that it's the ball.

[Ubiquitous]

Ubi, if it was just one year, then it could be explained by many factors. But, the sustained jump is what makes me believe that it's the ball.

If for the sake of the argument the ball isn't it why would we expect the jump to decline throughout the years? If stadiums are getting more conducive to hitting homers, and bats are getting better, and players are getting stronger, and aiming for the fence more while we should expect to see peaks and valleys?

I'm not saying it isn't the ball, I think the ball got more consistent and more towards the higher end of the limit, I'm just saying I don't think it is all the ball and nothing or little else.

[iblemetrician]

Thanks for all the comments, folks.