Can’t anyone hit? Where is the offense in the American League?
It’s easy to shake your head at the Rangers puny team batting average. It is embarrassing. Up and down the lineup they are looking up at the Mendoza line. They have nine guys not even hitting their weight.
But the Rangers aren’t the only AL team that is being environmentally friendly by not harming the wood they are holding in their hands.
Look at the batting averages across the league and you wonder when the new commissioner is going to institute some of his ideas to increase offense, like banning defensive shifts, lowering the mound, having batters call their pitches, two-ball walks, and the elimination of outfielders. Baseball has already lowered the mound and instituted the Designated Hitter rule in response to past offensive shortfalls, so wholesale changes are not unprecedented.
It’s early. But it’s awful.
More than two-thirds of the teams are batting below .250, and a third are at .225 and lower. And this in the league with the DH.
Good thing for the Rangers that the three worst offensive teams are from the American League West. That might be why, even at just 5-8, they are just two games back.
Teams are as afraid of running away with the division as a bachelor is of commitment.
Here are the team batting average after two weeks of play in 2015 in the AL, compared to what those teams hit in 2014, with their final position in parenthesis.
Only five teams are hitting better this year than they did last year, and Seattle is only because of the Detwiler-Scheppers effect. Detroit and Kansas City are one and two this year so far, which is how they finished last year, but in reverse. The biggest gains are with Kansas City, up 50 points, and Oakland, up 36 points from where they ended last season. The biggest drop is with the Rangers, from five to fourteen in ranking, losing 45 points from their final 2014 average. Houston is where it’s familiar, last. But, somehow, first in the division. Go figure.
But, as every struggling team says at a time like this, “It’s early.”
Which it is. Until it’s too late to be early.