Overall 2025 MLB Stats in Historical Context

Issue #483

This special edition of Now Taking the Field is an update of similar write-ups I’ve done the past few years. I’ve added in the data from the 2025 season, and made some tweaks to the narrative for each graph.

For this analysis I'm going to be looking at rate statistics, so that shortened seasons like 1981, 1994, 1995, and 2020 can be included, and we can also compare trends going far back, before the current 162-game schedule was established. So by “rate”, all numbers in this article are stats "per team, per game," and are obtained from Baseball Reference—see these batting, pitching, and fielding tables.

I’ve created the charts in this article myself, with the first one (HR) going back to 1871. The others go back to 1901, because some numbers were extremely different prior to that start of "modern baseball," and in some cases we lack the statistics altogether. (Note: the totals used here for "major leagues" now also include the various negro leagues that were recognized as having "major league" status.) The statistics included below are: HR, Runs, ERA, Batting Average, Stolen Bases, Caught Stealing, Triples, Sac Bunts, Strikeouts, Complete Games, Errors, and Catcher Passed Balls.

In 2024 there were 1.16 HR per team, per game—a bit more than than the 1.12 HR rate we saw in 2024, but less than the 1.21 HR rate from 2023. I’ve labelled in the chart above various relative highs and lows for HR going back all the way to 1871. Yes, the PED era saw an uptick in HR as compared with the 1970s and 1980s. But since then the use of advanced analytics, and especially the focus on launch angle and exit velocity, has led to more and more HRs being hit overall, with a record set in 2019 of 1.39 HR per team, per game.

As shown above, the level of runs scored per team, per game has fluctuated a lot over the years since 1901. The average across all 30 teams in 2024 was 4.45, higher than the 4.39 rate in 2024, but less than several other recent seasons. And the 2025 average is dramatically lower than the recent high of 5.14 in 2000, and the all-time high in 5.49 in 1930. But it remains well above many seasons from the 1960s and 1970s, including of course the 1968 “Year of the Pitcher” which saw a paltry 3.42 runs scored per team, per game.