Every Monday Baseball Musings compares the offense of the current season to the offense of the previous season through the same number of full weeks. Offense is in 2022 continues to collapse as the majors scored 8.60 runs per game compared to 9.01 runs per game a year earlier. Home runs and walks continue to be the big culprit in the offensive drop. Home runs are now down 0.3 per game, from 2.4 per game in 2021 to 2.1 per game this season. Walks are down from 6.52 to 6.15, nearly 0.4 per game. Even without the power, that’s 0.7 fewer base runners per game. Other hits, singles, doubles, and triples are up 0.5 per game, not enough to make up for the loss of base runners.

The good news is that batters are putting the ball in play more, as strikeout are down 0.8 per game. Batters need to work against the shift more, however. They need to find the holes to get the number of base runners back up.

Also note that the worries about the tackiness of the ball seem to have been misplaced. Hit by pitches are right were they were last season, even down slightly. Walks are down, so pitchers are not particularly wild. I suspect that MLB enforcing mud rubbing standards made a difference.

Last week produced 8.38 runs per game, the sixth week in a row where the week produced the lowest offense since 2015. Walks were high last week, but other hits fell, and those base runners tended to stay on base.