About this report
In 2012, High Heat Stats published an article about pitches per plate appearance. The core observation was that MLB plate appearances were using more pitches than they had in the late 1980s.
The original article was very interesting and I've been hoping for an update, but the key argument was mostly trapped in a graph. This report rebuilds the question as data, text, a simple chart, and a screen-reader-friendly table then modernizes it to capture all the data from 2012 to the present, including the weird season we call 2020.
The question is narrow on purpose:
What happened to MLB batting pitches per plate appearance from 1988 through 2025?
This report does not try to explain everything about modern hitting. It does not answer whether taking more pitches helps teams win. It does not decide whether patience is good, passivity is bad, or whether that idiot who bats eighth on your favourite team should stop watching strike three sail by him. Those are better questions for the next report where I'll incorporate enough data to start answering some of those questions.
This first report only asks whether the trend continued and whether pitches per plates appearances continued to rise.
What the data shows
League-average batting pitches per plate appearance rose from the late 1980s through the modern game. The change is real, but it is not enormous. From 1988 through 2025, the league average rose by roughly three-tenths of a pitch per plate appearance.
That is enough to matter across a full season. It is not enough to support every myth about modern hitting by itself.
The more useful conclusion is this:
Pitches per plate appearance went up, but the bigger story is probably not the raw size of the increase. The bigger story is what teams were trying to do inside each plate appearance.
That is why the team extremes matter. Each season has a high-P/PA team and a low-P/PA team. Those teams help show whether the league moved together or whether different hitting philosophies were stretching the range.
Why this report starts in 1988
Baseball-Reference team batting pitch-count data begins in 1988. That is why this report starts there.
That limitation matters. It means this report cannot answer older questions about how pitch usage, starting pitcher workload, bullpen strategy, and hitter approach changed in the 1960s and 1970s. Those questions are fascinating, but they need a different dataset. My Grandpa (who taught me a lot about baseball) was a huge fan of Sandy Koufax (even though he absolutely hated the Brooklyn Dodgers) and would have absolutely loved if I could have dug into pitch counts from the 1950s through the 1960s.
So this report stays inside the data we have incorporated into it:
- team batting pitch-count data
- standard team batting data used during normalization
- one season row per year
- highest and lowest team P/PA each season
- league-average P/PA calculated from total pitches and pitch-data plate appearances
The old pitcher-usage problem remains in the background for now.
How to read the chart
The chart shows three lines:
- League average P/PA: total pitches divided by total pitch-data plate appearances for the season.
- Highest team P/PA: the team that saw the most pitches per plate appearance that season.
- Lowest team P/PA: the team that saw the fewest pitches per plate appearance that season.
The league line shows the main trend. The high and low team lines show the range of team behavior around that trend. The chart is useful as a quick visual summary, but the table below it contains the same information in text form. Or if you want to use the data and do your own thing, open up your browser's developer tools and copy data.json.
How to read the table
The season table uses one row per MLB season.
The main fields are:
- Season: the MLB season.
- League average P/PA: total pitches divided by total pitch-data plate appearances.
- Year over year: change from the previous season.
- Highest team: team with the highest batting P/PA that season.
- Lowest team: team with the lowest batting P/PA that season.
- Team spread: difference between the highest and lowest team that season.
- Teams: number of MLB teams in that season's dataset.
The team spread is useful because it shows how far apart team approaches were in a given year. A larger spread means the most patient or pitch-heavy team was farther away from the most aggressive or low-P/PA team.
Methodology
The data was sourced from Baseball-Reference team pages, cached locally, and normalized into one dataset. This report uses the team pitches batting pages for each season from 1988 through 2025. The league-average P/PA value is calculated as:
total pitches / total pitch-data plate appearances
That is the headline value because it reflects the full league total, not a simple average of team averages.
The generated data also includes an unweighted average of team P/PA values, but the report uses weighted league average as the main number. League-average rows from Baseball-Reference are not used (because I'm not sure how they're generated). Instead, the value is calculated from the team rows so the report can use the same normalization rules for every season.
What this report does not answer
This report does not answer whether taking more pitches helps teams win.
That question needs more data, including wins, losses, runs, OPS, strikeouts, walks, batting average, and playoff outcomes. I have a second report planned for that question.
This report also does not separate good patience from bad patience because it has nowhere near enough data for that. And if you keep reading along, you'll discover that my second report on this subject doesn't answer that either.
A team can see more pitches because it controls the strike zone, takes walks, and punishes mistakes. A team can also see more pitches because it falls behind, fouls off a bunch of pitches with two strikes, and strikes out too much. The same P/PA number can contain very different baseball stories. But even there, I can't make a claim that one is more or less efficient because I don't have enough data. Heck, those long outings with a number of two strike foul balls can dramatically shorten a pitcher's longevity and force the opposing team's manager to dip into their bullpen faster. There is a whole team management side to this that our data is nowhere near answering.
That is why P/PA is interesting, but dangerous. It measures activity inside the plate appearance. It does not automatically measure offensive quality.
Accessibility notes
The chart is not the only way to read this report.
The same season-level data is provided in the table below the chart. The table can be searched, filtered by era, and sorted. The chart also includes a text description and visible labels for the three lines.
This matters because the original article's central idea was mostly visual. I wanted this version to be readable for people using screen readers, keyboard navigation, zoom, or plain old stubborn preference for tables.
I am still learning accessibility. If something does not work with your screen reader, keyboard, zoom settings, browser, or assistive technology setup, please contact me so I can fix it.
What did we learn?
Pitches per plate appearance increased from 1988 through 2025, but the increase is smaller than the mythology around modern hitting might suggest.
That does not make the trend meaningless. Across an entire league season, a small change per plate appearance becomes a lot of pitches. But the finding is more subtle than "modern hitters take forever."
The better question is philosophical:
What does a good plate appearance mean?
If more pitches reflect selectivity, zone control, and damage on mistakes, that can be valuable. If more pitches reflect passive hitting and strikeout-heavy survival, the number is much less flattering.
That is the next report.