MLB hitters slow out of the box to start 60-game season

NEW YORK (AP) — Two-time defending NL batting champion Christian Yelich has a long way to go if he wants a three-peat. The Milwaukee Brewers star is 1 for 28 to start the season, an .037 average that's worst among qualified hitters.

Not by much. Houston's George Springer is batting .048, and teammates Jose Altuve — another two-time batting champ — and Alex Bregman aren't much better at .174.

It's not just those big names. Coming off a condensed preseason camp for a 60-game season truncated by the coronavirus pandemic, hitters are stumbling out of the batter's box.

“At this point, just like you see in spring training, the pitchers are a little bit more ahead of the hitters,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said Wednesday.

The league-wide batting average after Wednesday's games is .229, down from .252 last season even though the National League adopted the designated hitter for this season. The all-time low for batting average is .237, set in 1968, “the year of the pitcher.”

Strikeouts are up for the 15th straight season — 24% compared to 22.4% in 2019, if you exclude pitchers from last year’s tally. Meanwhile, the home run rate is down a year after extra-slick baseballs helped produce a record 6,776 big flies.

It’s no sample size fluke, either. Batters have taken over 6,000 plate appearances.

And although hitters often start slowly in March and April, this collective slump is far worse than anything seen in recent years.

The reigning World Series champion Nationals have been among the clubs struggling most. The team has scored two or fewer runs in four of six games to start the season, and the Nationals were shut out through nine innings in one of the others before breaking out in extra innings.

The absence of Juan Soto, a star slugger sidelined...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/MLB-hitters-slow-out-of-the-box-to-start-60-game-15445782.php