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Baseball batter hitting ball
As the curtain falls on the 2022 MLB regular season, it’s time to start taking a look at the data. The MLB rules are changing faster than they have at any point in the modern history of the sport, with a modified postseason format and the universal DH coming into play in 2022 and a pitch clock, shift ban and pickoff limits coming down the pike in 2023.
While it’s likely too early to make any blanket statement on the impact of adding a sixth playoff team in each league (a sample size of one), there is now a 2430-game sample with National League teams using the designated hitter. On the surface, the change did not dramatically impact the run-scoring landscape: National League teams averaged 4.34 runs per game in 2022, which is actually down slightly from 4.46 in 2021 and the lowest it’s been since 2015.
National League pitchers accounted for about 5% of all of that league’s plate appearances in 2021 and replacing them with a designated hitter in 2022 wasn’t enough to trigger a meaningful change in the league’s on-base percentage (which also went down, from .318 to .314). The strikeout rate did go down slightly, however, from 9.0 per nine innings to 8.6.
The designated hitter also did not, largely speaking, create a new “everyday role” in most teams’ lineups. Only two National League players appeared in at least 100 games as a designated hitter this season: Nelson Cruz of the Nationals and Daniel Vogelbach of the Pirates and Mets. Andrew McCutchen was the Brewers’ leader, playing in that spot 82 times. Instead, teams largely opted to spread DH opportunities around to players who might otherwise have gotten the day off. 115 National League players appeared in at least five games as a DH this season, an average of nearly eight per team.
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As a result, NL designated hitters were largely league average hitters. They batted .238 with a .316 on-base and .402 slugging, right in line with the league averages of .243, .314 and .398. The Brewers were right in the middle of that pack: Their DHs had an on-base plus slugging of .699, ranking eighth out of 15 NL teams.
While the scoring outcome of games largely did not change with the universal DH, there were some significant alterations in the way the game was played.
“Set it and forget it” lineups
Eliminating the pitcher in the batting order greatly reduced the need for NL managers to make in-game moves, and it wasn’t just the “double switch” that went away: The need for bench players in any given game diminished greatly.
In 2021 National League teams brought position players off the bench and into the game 5937 times, an average of about 2 ½ times per contest. With no need to pinch hit for the pitcher in 2022 they did it 3204 times, about 1.3 times per game. In 2021 the Rockies used 342 position player subs, the least in the NL. That total would have been the second-most in the league in 2022.
That doesn’t mean that players on the bench didn’t play at all: The era of “everyday players” is largely over, so most players still got occasional starts to rest a regular at their position or, as noted above, they served as an occasional DH. But, largely speaking, a player who starts a game on the bench is more likely to stay there in this baseball environment, and this element of strategy has diminished as a result.
No bunting
Removing over 4000 pitcher plate appearances from the National League’s equation has also greatly reduced what used to be the pitcher’s primary offensive contribution: The sacrifice bunt. National League teams successfully laid down 536 sacrifice bunts in 2021, with pitchers accounting for 405 of them. In 2022 NL teams accumulated just 184 sac bunts, and the median team (the Brewers) did it just eleven times all year. Until the final weekend of the season the Braves hadn’t done it at all.
It’s worth noting that while pitcher bunts have been removed from the equation, position player bunts actually rose significantly in 2022: Position players accounted for just 131 sacrifice bunts in 2021, as compared to 184 in 2022. This could be a reaction to baseball’s diminished run environment and the extra inning rules, which both incentivize bunting more than they used to. This also doesn’t account for players who bunt for base hits, whether against the shift or simply against infielders playing back. Nonetheless, in 2021 a fan could expect to see a sac bunt about once every fifth game. For better or for worse, in 2022 that rate dropped to about once every 13 games.
Only time will tell if the strategies related to the universal DH will change over time or solidify in their current form. In the meantime, however, another new slate of rules is coming to change the game once again in 2023.
