The Two Circles That Changed My Life
A difficult baseball game became the perfect opportunity to teach my son one of the most valuable Stoic lessons: focus your energy on what matters and what you can control.
Why Are MLB Batting Averages So Low?
I recently looked at the Mets lineup and saw Christopher Morel batting sixth.
He was hitting .169 with a .445 OPS after previously being designated for assignment by the Tampa Bay Rays.
How the hell is that a major-league six hitter?
It isn’t just Morel. Austin Wells, the Yankees’ starting catcher, is hitting .177. Cal Raleigh has spent most of the season hitting around .158.
The truly shocking number, though, is .225.
As I write this, 21 of MLB’s 137 qualified hitters are below .225. That’s more than 15%—nearly one out of every six.
Baseball Corrected Itself—and Went Too Far
I understand that batting average doesn’t tell the whole story.
A .240 hitter who walks, hits 25 home runs, and produces a strong OPS can be valuable.
But baseball has taken that reasonable idea to the extreme. Batting average went from being overrated to being treated as though it tells us nothing.
It still tells us something important:
How often does this player get a hit?
A .225 hitter getting four at-bats has about a 36% chance of going hitless. Morel at .169 is nearly a coin flip to go 0-for-4.
That is why watching modern baseball can be so frustrating. Entire lineups are built around hitting the ball as far as possible while accepting strikeouts and empty at-bats.
A strikeout may not look much worse than another out in a spreadsheet. But it removes everything that makes baseball interesting.
No difficult defensive play. No error. No runner advancing. No rushed throw. No pressure.
A ball in play creates baseball.
A strikeout ends it.
I’ve written before about how baseball’s magic appears on an ordinary Tuesday—through a game-saving catch, a ridiculous throw, or a backup catcher becoming the hero. Those moments require the whole field to be involved.
What Batting Average Still Tells Us
Batting average should never be viewed alone. Look at walks, power, defense, position, and the complete player.
But context matters too.
World Series. Two outs. Runner on second. One run needed.
I don’t care what the model says. I want Luis Arraez at the plate.
Arraez is hitting over .320 and almost never strikes out. Nobody will give him a long-term contract, yet contenders keep acquiring him for the postseason. The Phillies even rearranged three defensive positions to fit him into their lineup.
That doesn’t prove contact is always more valuable than power. It proves contact still has value when an individual at-bat matters most.
This is what I tell my son too: You don’t have to be a pure power hitter to help a baseball team.
Make contact. Use the field. Run the bases. Play defense. Understand the situation.
Power gets attention.
But when the season is on the line and your team needs one hit, somebody still has to get one.
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