Cal Raleigh, last year's all world with 60 homers for the Mariners, is endemic now of MLB's hitting slump with seven homers, a .161 batting average and 62 OPS+. (Photo by Logan Riely/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

MLB Photos via Getty Images

We’re past the quarter pole of the Major League Baseball season and creeping toward Memorial Day. If there’s a theme to the 2026 season so far, it's that great pitching is dominating good hitting.

The league batting average is .240, the lowest since 1968 when hitters hit .237 and it was dubbed the year of the pitcher. That was the lowest recorded batting average for a single season in Major League history. MLB’s answer was to lower the height of the pitching mound from 15 inches to 10 inches.

Hitters responded, batting .248 in 1969 and .254 in 1970. Hitting reached a high of .270 in 2000 and has regressed since then.

Not even the new rules have made a dent in hitting. The elimination of extreme infield shifts, larger bases, only three pickoff throws, a limit on how relief pitchers can be used, and the pitch clock were supposed to positively impact hitting.

None of it has. Overall hitting jumped from .243 in 2022 to .248 in 2023. That increase was ephemeral as the current numbers show. Even the advent of the universal designated hitter in 2022, when pitchers stopped hitting, hasn’t had its desired effect.

Blame it on the pitching. The league’s ERA was 4.49 in 2019 and is now 4.10. Total hits allowed has declined from 42,309 in 2019 to 40,138 last year. There are 10,520 now. Home runs, which reached a zenith of 6,776 in 2019, declined to 5,650 last year. There have been 1,371 homers hit thus far this season.

“Yeah, pitchers are really good,” said Jeff Bannister, the Arizona Diamondbacks bench coach. “Young guys come in and veteran hitters have a lot of history. They’ve been around a long time. And that’s an advantage, really, with all the information that’s out there in our league, video, analytical data. And the way pitchers study hitters under the hood to learn how to get them out, it’s a trend. They always try to be one step ahead of hitters.”

It’s a game of adjustments and so far many of the league’s best hitters aren’t figuring it out.

Major Stars Are Dealing with Declines in Offensive Production

Cal Raleigh, who set a record last year for a switch-hitter and a catcher with 60 homers for the Mariners, has seven right now and is hitting .161 with a 62 OPS+. The league average in that category is 100.

Shohei Ohtani, who hit a career-high 55 homers for the Dodgers last season, also has seven right now. He’s hitting .240, but the unicorn is still pitching up a storm with an MLB-leading 0.82 ERA by a full run.

Mets slugger Juan Soto, who knocked 43 homers last season, has five now and is hitting .269. He’s making $62 million this year. Pete Alonso had 41 homers for the Mets last season and has 10 for the Orioles so far.

San Diego’s Fernando Tatis Jr., San Francisco’s Luis Arraez and Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson have yet to hit any home runs between them.

That’s just a small sample of a league-wide trend.

“Pitching is good,” beleaguered Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Pitching is elite throughout the league. Like every night, not only starters but bullpens—there’s so much. Yes, you can make a case we have a few hitters struggling here, but when you look around the league it’s all the same thing.”

It’s A League-Wide Epidemic, For Sure.

On the Mets, Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette and the now-injured Francisco Lindor are barely hitting their weight.

On the Padres, Manny Machado is batting .190, Jackson Merrill .215, Ramon Laureno .214 and Fernando Fermin .176. And they’re all in the starting lineup.

On the Giants, their trio of top stars – Rafael Devers, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman – are earning $80.4 million and have nine homers between them. Chapman has one and is hitting .238. Harrison Bader, an offseason free-agent signing, has two homers with a .136 batting average.

On the D-backs, their top two players, Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo, can’t get it going. They are hitting .215 and .218, respectively, with seven home runs between them.

On the Dodgers, aside from the slumping Ohtani, Kyle Tucker, who signed a four-year, $240 million free-agent deal and is making $55 million this season alone, is batting .253 with four homers and 20 RBIs.

On the Yankees, captain Aaron Judge's .268 batting average is far below his MLB-leading .331 from last year. But he still has 16 homers and 30 RBIs. Catcher Austin Wells (.180), second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. (.203) and centerfielder Trent Grisham (.175) are all struggling.

To be sure, there are nine batters in the American League and 10 in the National League who are currently hitting over the .300-mark with Randy Marsh of the Phillies and Shea Langeliers of the A’s pacing each circuit with .340 averages. So, there’s still hope. Remember, though, the NL only had one .300 hitter last year, Philadelphia’s Trea Turner, who led at .304.

This all is making managers scratch their collective heads.

“It’s my job to figure out the puzzle,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said.

Why are so many great players not hitting?

“I don’t know. I don’t have that answer,” he added.

There are no rules that can stop San Diego’s Mason Miller, Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes and Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski from consistently throwing 100 to 105 mph, which they all do. And they throw those pitches for strikes.

A hitter has about a half a second to react to a pitch that’s in the 95 mph range. The reaction time gets worse when the speed of that pitch incrementally increases.

Age is a factor for veteran hitters facing much younger flame-throwing pitchers. They don’t even have a nanosecond to move the bat through the zone.

MLB can’t move the mound back because it begs more shoulder and elbow injuries, which pitchers already suffer in in the near triple-digits each season. MLB has experimented with moving it back 12 inches in the Atlantic League, but it was inconclusive.

It’s part of the evolution of the game and at this point there seems to be no turning back.