From Launch Angles to Lost Contact — BWAL’s Batting Averages Plummet in 2025
- Johnny Besecker
- Oct 29
- 2 min read
A League in Transition
Season 3 of the BWAL has delivered something unexpected: a complete statistical shift. Batting averages across the league have dropped sharply, while strikeouts have reached an all-time high. What once looked like an offensive paradise has turned into a pitcher’s playground.
📊 The Numbers Don’t Lie
Here’s how league-wide regular-season numbers stack up:
In short:
Batting average has fallen nearly 30% since the inaugural season.
Strikeouts have risen 20 points, meaning almost half of all plate appearances now end with a K.
Every team is striking out more and hitting less — a league-wide trend that’s impossible to ignore.
🔎 Team-by-Team Breakdown (Season 3)
A few takeaways:
Cherrypickers remain the outlier — still making consistent contact, hitting over .400.
Titans maintain a solid balance.
8 Balls and Dragons are mirror images of MLB’s all-or-nothing hitters — huge swings, big misses.
The Dragons’ 55% K rate is the highest team total in BWAL history.
A Pitcher’s League
Season 3’s transformation can be traced to stronger pitching depth and smarter sequencing:
Faster, more deceptive arms — velocity and movement up across the board.
Defensive efficiency improving — fewer free bases and more clean innings.
The result? A “dead ball” feel — the kind of league-wide drought that Major League Baseball experienced around 2021–2022, when batting averages dipped below .245 for the first time in decades.
⚾ MLB Parallels
BWAL’s third season looks eerily like MLB’s 2022 campaign:
Fewer balls in play.
Batting averages steadily fell (league avg around .255 → .243 → .231).
More strikeouts than hits in several series.
A “three true outcomes” rhythm — home run, walk, or strikeout.The data shows BWAL evolving into a similar era — a testing ground where pitching dominates and hitters must adapt or fade.
The New Normal
At this point, maybe this is just the league now. Pitching’s sharper, hitters are pressing, and contact isn’t coming easy. It’s not a fluke anymore — it’s the new standard.
Season 3 didn’t expose a problem; it revealed where BWAL’s evolved to. Games are tighter, runs are harder to find, and the margin for error is smaller than ever.
The bats will adjust eventually — they always do — but for now, we’re living in a different kind of league. One built on execution, not explosion.
Out here, this is just how it is.
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