Welcome to July. Baseball is quickly approaching its All-Star break—moving out of the land of small sample sizes and into the realm of trade-deadline chatter and gradually solidifying playoff pictures. So what did we learn in June? Here are a few key takeaways:
The offensive environment has started to look less extreme
April and May were full of conversation about offense—how little of it there was, how infrequently the ball was put in play, whether MLB was really staring down another Year of the Pitcher. But most of those discussions came with an important caveat: Offense is always lower in the spring.