Let suicide squeeze one more MLB topic in before the OT season ends. On Saturday, the MLB Network broadcasted a game between AAA Syracuse Mets and Charlotte Knights (White Sox). The purpose was to highlight to a broader audience some of the rules that are being tested in A, AA, and AAA ball games. Here is a summary of the changes highlighted in the broadcast and (The Leagues) where they are tested:
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Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
What happens in the first month of a given Major League Baseball season isn t necessarily indicative of what will happen in the next five months, yet the 2021 campaign has already birthed an alarming trend.
Hitting, which was already notoriously difficult to begin with, is now basically impossible.
After more than a month s worth of games, hitters are tracking toward yet another strikeout record by whiffing in 24.3 percent of their plate appearances. They re also maintaining a .233 batting average, the lowest mark in the league s 150-year history.
Based on these numbers, there s never been a worse time to be a hitter in Major League Baseball. And while it might be easy to wave them off as small-sample-size weirdness, they begin to look more like an unavoidable fate as specific causes pile up.