Three true outcomes taking action out of baseball

With a .266 batting average that led the majors by a point over the Red Sox entering action Monday, the Cubs are bucking a potentially historic trend.

Teams overall are hitting .246 this season, down from .255 in 2017, with the White Sox slightly below average at .243. And balls in play are at their lowest ebb in history.

Overall batting average hasn’t been below .251 since the American League adopted the designated hitter in 1973. Only twice in the live-ball era, which began in 1920, has the major-league average been lower. The lowest was the .237 in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher. Next was the .244 in 1972, and the .246 in 1963 equaled the 2018 pace.

The DH came into play the year after the 1972 doldrums. And after the 1968 offensive drought in which the average ERA was 2.98, the mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10. The strike zone was returned to pre-1963 dimensions after an ill-advised experiment with the largest zone in history.

The 1963-68 offensive plunge wasn’t a raised-mound era, as is sometimes erroneously claimed. The mound was set at a maximum of 15 inches in 1903 and at exactly 15 inches above the baseline in 1950. Until the lowering in 1969, Billy Williams was facing pitches from the same height as Ted Williams had in the previous generation.

Despite the drop in batting average, scoring this season is at a normal level for the 2010s. Teams have averaged 4.39 runs per game, down from 4.65 last season and 4.48 in 2016. But runs are up from 4.25 in 2015, and other than 2016 and 2017, the last season scoring was at a higher level than this season was 2009 (4.61).

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Home runs continue to prop up scoring, though the 1.14 homers per team per game are down from 1.26 last season and 1.16 in 2016. The only other season in history with a higher rate was 2000 (1.17).

Strikeouts continue to soar and again are on a record pace at 8.53 per team per game after 8.25 last season and 8.03 in 2016, the first time the average topped eight. Walks are up marginally to 3.27 per team per game after 3.26 in 2017 and 3.11 in 2016.

The combination has made baseball more of a three-true-outcomes game than ever before. If you include hit batters with homers, walks and strikeouts, 34.9 percent of plate appearances this season have ended without a fielder needing to make a play.

The Cubs buck that trend, too, with 33.6 percent of their plate appearances ending in true outcomes. The Sox are almost right on the norm at 35.1 percent.

The pace would put about 120,400 balls in play this season, down from 121,494 in 2017. Go back a decade, and there were 131,860 balls in play in 2008.

There might be more than 11,000 fewer balls in play this season than in 2008. If baseball has an offensive crisis, that’s where it lies — in more strikeouts and less action.