With batting averages falling around the league, why are MLB hitters not able to simply hit the ball?

I’m lucky to have grown up when and where I did. Summers in Gonzales, Louisiana meant baseball, both city and parish, with a great group of guys. Jason Williams was a year behind me and Kim Batiste was four years in front.

Ascension Parish is like a little oasis of baseball surrounded by the south Louisiana NFL desert. Over in Baton Rouge, it was all about LSU football. Down in New Orleans, the Saints reigned supreme. But this one little spot, this island of baseball love and baseball excellence stood alone. It was a glorious childhood.

When I was 15 years old, the same year that Kim was drafted by the Phillies, I finished the Dixie Boys summer season with a .680 batting average as a catcher, hitting out of the three spot. Here is the thing, though: that wasn’t unusual. There were at least ten guys in the league who put up similar numbers, or better. Everybody could hit.

There were a few fireballers around and one guy, Scott Stafford, threw a back-foot curve that nobody in the state could catch. Except me. I lost touch with Scotty over the years, but I never did see a better curve ball, one with more movement or speed on it, anywhere.

Baseball has changed, almost beyond recognition, since those days. Two generations have grown up in the wake of the changes brought about by the focus on Bill James’ work. Don’t worry, I am not planning a hatchet job on sabermetrics. I mean, they are, after all, only a new way to interpret the data that was already there. But there is no doubt that the focus, almost to exclusivity, that teams, coaches, and players give to these concepts has radically altered the way the game is played.

Back in the 1980s, we were taught that the worst thing, the absolute worst thing that you could do at the plate was to strike out. We were taught, like our fathers before us, that nothing can happen until you put the ball into play. Without that simple act, touching the ball with the bat, the game can never get started. But the key to the concept is what followed: if you put the ball into play, anything can happen.

Billy Ripken recently stirred the waters of social media by bringing up a gaping flaw in the current crop of hitters, namely the desire to swing for the fences rather than put a ball into play. He got a ton of response, some defending his stance, but most deriding it as outdated hogwash.

“Home runs sell tickets,” they say. “People want to see bombs, not bunts!”

Ripken’s comments were in direct response to a question about why batting averages are down league-wide. His reasoning is without flaw. Averages have nothing to do with home runs, but everything to do with having a hitting mindset.

“Tell yourself you’re not gonna strike out. You know what you’ll do? You won’t strike out!” says Ripken, and he is exactly right.

With all of the burning questions about banning the shift so that batters without the God-given common sense to go the other way can get on base, the answer is staring baseball in the face. Teach kids to hit. Not to hit with power, but to make contact. Despite what armchair coaches around the country tell you, slapping a hit to the opposite field is not overly difficult.

Levels, of course, are everything in baseball. When we were kids, you could see that Kim was a different level. Eventually, he made it all the way to the Show, while Jason had a sparkling career at LSU, the Olympic team, and the minor leagues. I made it only as far as a walk-on at a Division III school and then finished up in Europe. It is all about the levels.

But even at my relatively low level, I could almost always push a pitch the other way. The idea that Joey Gallo can’t… I have to agree with Billy Ripken. I just don’t buy it.

Big league players don’t hit for average because they have been taught not to. And that, quite simply, undermines the game. Sabermetrics may tell us that going 1 for 5 with a home run is better return-on-investment than going 4 for 5 with singles, but it is killing baseball.

The so-called “three true outcomes” are all down this season, which is not very shocking if you consider how little they truly have to do with the game of baseball. The apparent disparity here, though, is that if home runs, strikeouts, and walks are all down, why then is average also down? The answer is that hitters are still swinging for the fences, but they are simply coming up short. Blame a new ball design (and oh boy, have they ever blamed the ball!) or any number of other factors that you want to, but the truth of the matter is that in another time, no ball change would have mattered. Rod Carew or Rickey Henderson or Pete Rose would have simply slapped the ball into play regardless.

Baseball, like life, always finds a way to reinvent itself. As one generation grows tired of a particular element of the game and shifts their focus onto another, the following generation re-discovers it. An argument could be made that a resurgent interest in “small ball” tactics is already underway, with Houston Astros leadoff hitter José Altuve choosing to bunt for a hit on a regular basis and during their sweep of the Yankees, Altuve’s bunt for a hit was followed up with the same from Jeremy Peña. They are catching on.

Who knows? Maybe one day, in the not too distant future hopefully, coaches and managers will rediscover the joy of simply putting the ball into play. Once the ball is in play, then anything truly can happen.