There’s no reason increased velo, higher spin, better video engendering smarter pitch selection, etc. should lead to lower batting average but not lower HR rate.

The reason it did is that … sigh … sorting for batting average hit tool waned, sorting for HR power tool increased.

SOOOOOOOOO close to getting it! You’re like 99% of the way there now!

If you are a player with an outstanding hit tool, it is going to behoove you to try to lift the ball into the air. There’s a perfect example of a player who made this adjustment mid-career: Daniel Murphy.

Murphy was at one time a Mark Grace-style first baseman. He had a long track record of being a perfectly mediocre major league Mark Grace-type first baseman, hitting for high batting averages but not a lot of power with that good hit tool. Mid-career, he adjusted his swing and went for a different launch angle. His fly ball percentage soared, and his HR/FB soared. He was still the same excellent hit tool player he always was, except now he was an actually good baseball player, far better than a Mark Grace caliber player. His strikeout rate didn’t increase, and his walk rate didn’t change.

He could still see the ball and hit the ball. He simply stopped giving away outs by hitting the ball on the ground.

This is how ALL hitters with good hit tools are trained now. They are trained not to hit the ball on the ground, because ground balls have a low vallue. The high hit tool hitters didn’t disappear, they just learned to ALSO hit with power and to not hit the ball on the ground.

“Launch angle” has been decried as some sort of evil, but all it really is trying to accomplish is to limit ground balls, a low value batted ball event. When you look at the top hit tool prospects in the minors, most of them project to have solid power in the major leagues. Teams don’t say “we’re not interested in this high hit tool guy without a lot of power,” they say “we need to figure out how to get this high hit tool guy to hit the ball in the air.”

Jacob Wilson of the A’s is a perfect avatar of this kind of player. He has a 70 hit tool grade, and was a really, really tough out in the minors. The fear with Wilson, who has savant-level bat-to-ball skills, was that he would not hit enough to be a true star. This year in a full season with the A’s, he batted .311 with a low walk rate and moderate power, and had a solid 3.5 WAR season. He’s sort of a Rod Carew type! Look at him out there, existing, getting treated like a top prospect!

The A’s will still certainly try to get him to bring down his ground ball rate, as they should. There’s more upside in him due to that alone.

These new black Knicks jerseys are sweet AF. They even have “once a Knick always a Knick” stitched into them. 5 stars. Would recommend.

I’m of the opinion that everything cited here (velocity, defensive adjustments, etc) has been a contributing factor but I do think the modern GM may be more responsible than the others, especially when they’re actively redesigning players’ swings at an organizational level in the minor leagues.

And lastly, I do think benchmarking is a three body problem. You need to measure against current environment, historical norms, and expectations. Focusing on one and saying consideration of all three is “fundamentally wrong” is troublesome.

Not really sure that’s how it works.

Kind of getting hamster wheel-ish at this point.

(And then of course once we realize that the aggregate batting average of a league is heavily dependent on the sorting mechanism to pick players, any asserted “natural” relationship between batting average and velocity or pitcher quality starts to badly fray. All of this stuff is contextual.)

The “sorting mechanism” that is used is “are they good baseball players,” while you would seem to like to use the sorting mechanism “do they have a high batting average.” Baseball GMs got smart enough to realize a player like Joey Gallo can still be a good baseball player while hitting .199, as impossible as that may seem.

Was he like the best player in the league? No. Is he the kind of player you don’t want to rely on in the playoffs? Possibly. Are there BETTER HITTERS THAN HIM who didn’t have jobs? No. No there were not. Were there hitters who might have had a higher batting average? I mean, sure, possibly. The aforementioned Greg Allen batted .227 in the major leagues. Is he in any universe a remotely comparable hitter in terms of value to Joey Gallo circa 2021? No, he is not.

If you’re making some other kind of argument that I’m not understanding, please forgive me. Gallo had a 123 wRC+ in 2021, and I really don’t give a flying shit about his batting average. He was a productive hitter. There are generally not guys kicking around in the minor leagues who can put up a 123 wRC+ in the majors, and people who run major league baseball franchises are not drooling idiots.

Joey Gallo was 28th in hitter WAR in 2021, the year he hit .199. He had higher WAR than guys like Nolan Arenado, Xander Boegarts, and Francisco Lindor.

Were there a bunch of 4.4 WAR players just loitering around not getting playing time?

Did you read what I wrote?

In terms of the entirely different question you asked, I don’t know. Maybe? Do they run WAR MLEs for minor leaguers? I honestly don’t know.

(And Gallo was a 0.5 WAR player for the Yankees in 2021.)

Were there a bunch of 4.4 WAR players just loitering around not getting playing time?