Baseball is incredible. Where else can you find a two-way star like Shohei Ohtani, who leads the American League in home runs and also started and won a game Monday in which he drove in or scored a majority of the Los Angeles Angels’ runs? Baseball is terrible. Why bother with a sport whose hitters have collectively produced a .232 batting average, which would rank as the worst ever and mark the third time in four years that number has dropped? Baseball is incredible. We have never seen such precision from a starting pitcher like Corbin Burnes, who has started the season by striking out 49 batters and walking nobody, his adjusted ERA an otherworldly 265, his Fielding Independent Pitching a near-invisible 0.51. Baseball is terrible. We’re not yet to May 1 and already we’ve seen 14 position players pitch, a record pace for a once-whimsical rarity that’s now a far too common statement on the overall dearth of acceptable pitching around the major leagues. Baseball is incredible. Jacob deGrom is the game’s best pitcher and, amazingly, is getting better, striking out a career-high 15 in his last start, sporting a 0.31 ERA with 50 strikeouts, breaking Shane Bieber’s days-old mark (shared with Nolan Ryan) of 48 punchouts through four starts. Baseball is terrible. Strikeouts now comprise 25% of all plate appearances, and 2021 almost assuredly will mark the 25th consecutive season the strikeout rate has risen and the fourth consecutive year there will be more strikeouts than hits. Baseball is incredible. Never has a player started his career like Fernando Tatis Jr., who despite an injured list stint is on track for 47 homers and 27 steals this year, a five-tool talent and the perfect bellwether for the next generation of stars. Baseball is terrible. Never has there been less action in the game, with a record 37% of plate appearances ending in one of three “true outcomes” – home run, strikeout, walk – and the average time of a nine-inning game still a record 3 hours, 7 minutes despite an onerous three-batter minimum rule for relief pitchers. So. About this first month: It is a small sample size, of course. Greatness and mediocrity don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And it could very well be that the game is in this strange transitional stage – perhaps you’ve heard the home office is pondering significant changes to shake it out of it – where one group of players, the pitchers, exhibit too much control. Heck, just a few moments after the more casual fan knew Burnes’ name, he was dealt his first loss by yet another relative unknown. Next flamethrower up.“It’s as hard as ever to score runs,” says Craig Counsell, manager of the first-place Milwaukee Brewers and the guy fortunate enough to trot Burnes out there every fifth day. “And as much as anything, it’s about velocity – the velocity of the game just continues. The Marlins pitcher yesterday was really darn good – he was throwing 97 mph in the sixth inning last night.
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