Two weeks into the season offense is a bit down from the first two weeks of 2014. Last season, the majors were averaging 8.41 runs per game. This year, the average stands at 8.24 runs per game. Home runs are up, 1.86 per game this season compared to 1.81 per game during the same period last year. Both walks and other hits are down. Interestingly, strikeouts are down as well, 15.08 per games during the first two weeks of 2014, 14.68 per game this year. That’s good, as stemming the rise of strikeouts would be a good way to increase batting averages. I wonder if the pace rules have anything to do with this?

Most interesting, the majors managed to play 14 more games this year. It feels like there have been few postponements, and no double headers so far.

The other thing I’m sensing this year is that talent is skewed toward the extremes. With about 12 games played by each team, 37 PA should give us a complete list of players qualifying for average titles. Here is the list sorted by OBP, the current MLB average at .310. The median of the group is .317. I’d expect most of the density around .317, but in fact the OBP goes up to .340 pretty quickly and down to .294 about as fast. There’s going to be a lot of regression to the mean in the next few weeks.