Baseball Prospectus: Since 2012

[weams]

Since 2012, we have seen unprecedented:

- Reward for hitters who are aggressive early in counts, relative to those who take the first pitch;

- Success for batters when the ball is put in play, relative to the offensive environment;

- Production from up-the-middle defensive players, relative to the league?s overall offensive output;

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These last few years, we've been living in a world of extremes. It's not enough to say, as so many have, that scoring is at its lowest levels since the early 1990s. It's not even enough to observe, as even more people have, that the scoring drought has been driven by the combination of record-high strikeout rates and record-low walk rates (walks were rarer in 2014 than in any season since 1968, and rarer than in any season between 1920 and that one). There are several fundamental things about the way offense worked for the last two decades that have not been true for