The Rise Of 3 True Outcomes

Baseball's inexorable march to ridiculousness

The Rise Of 3 True Outcomes

I’m going to do something unusual today. I’m going to respond to somebody else’s post.

Neil Paine is a great writer. You should subscribe to his Substack.

He wrote a post a few weeks back on when the nerds took over each of the major sports. I recommend reading it:

When Did “The Nerds” Start Ruining Each Sport?

If you don’t want to read it, of course, you can always just look at the data point he brings up. Neil created a really nice chart showing the rise of “3 true outcome” baseball from 1980 to today:

Now, I should do what Neil did and mess around with Datawrapper. But I’ll leave that for another day.

Instead, I’m going to show you, as simply as I can, how 3 True Outcome has been on the rise since the beginning of the game.

I’m using this data from the batting data on Baseball-Reference. Please note that this includes Negro League data. I don’t think it will skew much, however.

We’re only looking at home run rates, strikeout rates, and walk rates per plate appearance.

Here’s what the raw data looks like:

And then we add in the percentages:

You can tell that I didn’t do anything fancy with the columns. This is just a quick demonstration of what has happened over time.

And, after some really unconvincing manipulation in LibreOffice Calc (I’ll use Datawrapper next time, I promise), I came up with this simple area chart:

You see — looking at the data from 1980 onwards only tells you part of the story. The true story here is that the three true outcome trend has been a constant part of baseball history.

Rule changes caused the first spikes in both strikeouts and walks starting in the mid-1880s, and the second rise in strikeouts starting around 1904 came because of the spitball.

Things went back to something closer to normal in the 1920s with the spitball gone — but walks and strikeouts slowly mounted over time.

And, honestly, this chart is a beautiful explanation for why the game just doesn’t have the same level of popularity that it once did. Nobody puts the ball in play anymore.

Now, onto a few stats that should make you think.

First, the lowest days of Three True Outcome percentage all came before 1930:

Meanwhile, the years of unacceptably high Three True Outcome percentages all came after 1994:

Interestingly enough, walks aren’t really the culprit. The highest years for walks were 1949 and 1950:

2025 is making a pretty good showing, though we’ve got a long way to go if we’re going to see almost 11% of at bats end in a walk.

Home run percentage is a big part of the problem. Remember how everybody was concerned about home runs coming too cheaply in 1987? Well, 1987 looks like a pipe dream:

But, of course, the biggest problem of them all is strikeout percentage:

Why is the game so boring today?

Simple. Everybody strikes out.

That’s the problem. It’s no fun to watch every hitter strike out. It’s no fun when over 20% of plate appearances end in a strikeout.

It’s not special anymore. It’s not exciting. It’s too predictable.

Notice those 1960s seasons on that chart? If you read The APBA Journal or The Sporting News from the late 1960s, you’ll notice something. A lot of fans were complaining about the strikeouts. They complained that the game became boring.

See — football didn’t overtake baseball in 1958 because of a good championship game. Nope — it overtook baseball in the late 1960s because baseball was turning into a game devoid of hitting and full of strikeouts and 1-0 games.

We’re no longer in danger of seeing the same thing happen today. We’ve already gone far past that. We’re in no man’s land right now, and the game is frankly unwatchable.

Something needs to happen to convince these guys to put the ball in play.