Million Dollar Musings and Deep Thoughts With Cheese: Monday, June 7th
Happy Monday! We’ve got just three games on the schedule tonight, with a 3-game slate at 5:10pm ET on FanDuel and a 2-game slate on DK at 9:38pm ET. 9:38? That’s as good a time as any I suppose. We’re about a third of the way into the MLB season, and with the small schedule, I figured today would be a good day to step back and take a big picture look at the state of MLB so far this season.
A couple years ago, I started a segment called Deep Thoughts With Cheese, inspired of course by the classic Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live. Before we get into some MLB talk, let’s consider this:
Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling.
DEEP THOUGHTS WITH CHEESE
A couple things are very clearly different this season and it all starts with strikeouts. It’s all about to get trickier as the league is saying they are ready to start cracking down on pitchers use of illegal substances, but until we see what that actually means, who knows what it actually means. My hunch is that it only takes one big name pitcher getting a suspension to have some real effect here, so maybe these numbers shift in a hurry, but for now, let’s take a look at what’s going on this season compared to past years.
League Average Strikeout Rate
2017 – 21.6%
2018 – 22.3%
2019 – 23%
2020 – 23.4%
2021 – 24.2%