ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Baseball can’t run away from its lack of runs.
Batting averages are near half-century lows. Velocity is at an all-time high.
"Run scoring, it’s not easy to do. It’s hard and it’s getting harder,” Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Pitchers are getting better by the outing.”
The major league batting average was .240 through April and .239 in May, the lowest since the bottom of .237 in 1968’s Year of the Pitcher. It’s risen slightly along with the temperature as spring turned to summer: .246 in June and .250 in July, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Still, the season average of .243 heading into the All-Star break was just ahead of 2022 and 1968 as the lowest since the dead-ball era ended in 1920.
“Batting average was down a little bit. That’s not necessarily a good thing if you’re looking for action in the game,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said in late May.
And the drop isn’t just in the big leagues. This year’s minor league batting average is .243, down from .256 in 2019.
“I didn’t see 100 (mph) when I was playing. It’s commonplace now,” said Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, whose last season was 2008.
Average four-seam fastball velocity is 94.2 mph this year, matching 2023 and up from 91.1 mph in 2008. There were 3,880 pitches of 100 mph or higher last year, up from 214 in 2008.
Just at Triple-A this year there have been 461.
“You can tell as a hitter. Guys are going to the top with the fastballs,” said Dylan Crews, the No. 2 draft pick last year and now at Washington's Triple-A Rochester farm team.
In an age of shortened attention spans, Major League Baseball has tried to increase action by instituting limits on defensive shifts in 2023 along with a pitch clock to cut dead time. The average time of a nine-inning game dropped from 3 hours, 4 minutes in 2022 to 2:40 last year and 2:36 thus far this season, but runs remain near post-Steroids Era lows: 4.39 per team each game, down from 4.62 last year and up from 4.28 in 2022.
Still, hitters have cut down slightly on strikeouts: the rate of 8.36 per team per game this season is the lowest since 2017, down from 8.61 last year and a record 8.81 in 2019.
“There’s more spin rate. There’s harder throwers,” San Diego star third baseman Manny Machado said. “There’s just so much information and I think that’s what creates the havoc and makes hitting a little bit harder.”
The percentage of fastballs — four-seamers, sinkers and cutters — is 55.5% this year, just above last season’s 55.4%. It was 62.5% in 2015.
Spin rates on sliders, sweepers and slurves have increased from 2,106 revolutions per minute in 2015 to 2,475 this year and their use has increased from 10.9% to 22.5%.
Team wonks view video and dissect data to provide pitchers pointers and batters blueprints. The Dodgers employ senior directors of baseball systems applications and baseball systems platforms along with directors of baseball strategy and information, quantitative analysis, baseball product development, integrative baseball performance, performance innovation lab and baseball innovation.
As a result of the perpetual perusal, pitchers are told what to throw, when to throw and how to throw.
Atlanta’s Max Fried mixes seven pitches: four-seamer, sinker, cutter, slider, sweeper, curveball and changeup.
“The information is so prevalent that there are no secrets,” Fried said. “Baseball is still a game of changing speeds and mixing up looks and if you can just kind of keep guys off balance as much as you possibly can there, you’re going to give yourself the best chance to be successful.”
The New York Yankees built a pitching laboratory known as the “Gas Station” at their minor league complex in Tampa, Florida, ahead of the 2020 season, a type of facility that is now becoming more commonplace. Pitchers from big leaguers down to high school have gone to Driveline in Kent, Washington, to develop their repertoires. “Pitch shape” has become a common term.
“You could go long periods, months maybe, where teams were not adding new pitches,” Baldelli said. “And now you see almost every series, you run in against a team and someone’s doing something completely different. I think the fear has kind of left the major league clubhouses when it comes to making adjustments.”
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB
Atlanta Braves' Matt Olson, right, reacts after striking out against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the fifth inning during a baseball game Wednesday, July 10, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Baltimore Orioles' Ryan Mountcastle (6) reacts after striking out against New York Yankees pitcher Luis Gil during the sixth inning of a baseball game, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
San Diego Padres' Manny Machado walks back to the dugout after popping out during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Toronto Blue Jays' Bo Bichette walks to the dugout after striking out against the San Francisco Giants during the sixth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
NEW YORK (AP) — In what appears to be a sophisticated, remote attack, pagers used by hundreds of members of Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding thousands more.
A U.S. official said Israel briefed the U.S. on the operation — in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated — on Tuesday after it was concluded. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The Iran-backed militant group blamed Israel for the deadly explosions, which targeted an extraordinary breadth of people and showed signs of being a long-planned operation. Details on how the attack was executed are largely uncertain and investigators have not immediately said how the pagers were detonated. The Israeli military has declined to comment.
Here's what we know so far.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah previously warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group's movements. As a result, the organization uses pagers to communicate.
A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the exploded devices were from a new brand the group had not used before. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, did not identify the brand name or supplier.
Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies, explains smart phones carry a higher risk for intercepted communications in contrast to the more simple technology of pagers.
This type of attack will also force Hezbollah to change their communication strategies, said Reese, who previously worked as an intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday's explosions are likely to throw away "not just their pagers, but their phones, and leaving their tablets or any other electronic devices.”
Even with a U.S. official confirming it was a planned operation by Israel, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out. Several experts who spoke with The Associated Press explained how the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.
Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.
By the time of the attack, “the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery," said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.
“A pager has three of those already,” explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”
After security camera footage appeared on social media Tuesday purporting to show one of the pagers explode on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts offered opinions that corroborate the U.S. official's statement that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.
“Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.
This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He adds that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, notes that Israel had been accused of carrying out similar operations in the past. Last year, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used.
It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.
The sophistication of the attack suggests that the culprit has been collecting intelligence for a long time, Reese explained. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.
And it's likely the compromised pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst with over 37 years experience in the region, said he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of Tuesday's pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.
“The pagers functioned perfectly for six months," Magnier said. What triggered the explosion, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.
Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers didn’t go off, allowing the group to inspect them. They came to the conclusion that between 3 to 5 grams of a highly explosive material were concealed or embedded in the circuitry, he said.
Jenzen-Jones also adds that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting" — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.jenzen
“How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?” he said.
Hezbollah issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”
People donate blood for those who were injured by their exploded handheld pagers, at a Red Cross center, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
