Through the first third of the 2026 baseball season, there seems to be a common denominator across the sport, and that is the overall lack of offense. While MVP’s have gotten off to slow starts, data backs up that offense has been down across the sport from historical trends at this point during most seasons.
Why is offense down?
Through the first third of the 2026 season, the league has a cumulative batting average of .240, an on bace percentage of .318 and a slugging percentage of .390. According to FanGraphs, going back to just this time last season, the batting average has dropped five points and the slugging percentage five points as well. To explain this, the ball is not falling in the way it has in the past. Home Runs are down by just one from this time last season, but watching games on a regular basis, there are a lot of balls dying on the warning track of ballparks in the early goings.
Pitching also plays a big factor in this. At this point last season, only 19 starting pitchers who have pitched 60 or more innings had an ERA under three, including four starters who had an ERA under two. In 2026, there are 20 qualified starting pitchers with an ERA under three, and included in that is five starters with an ERA under two. This comes with the emergence of young starters like Cam Schlittler, Christopher Sanchez, Trey Yesavage, among others.
MLB Park Factor
Another big factor to offense being down is the park factor in 2026 compared to seasons past. According to Statcast, there are just 11 ballparks in baseball that have an offensive positive park factor, with the remaining 19 ballparks either neutral or negative park factor that take away offense.
Looking at the numbers from the 2025 season, 14 ballparks qualified as positive offensive ballparks with 16 negative. Interestingly, ballparks like Great American Ball Park and Yankee Stadium have been more offensive friendly in 2026 compared to 2025, while Angel Stadium and Comerica Park have been polar opposites.
Things out of our control, like climate and weather patterns contribute to this as we see with Globe Life Field in Texas. In a dry summer in Arlington like 2023, a unique one, Globe Life Field yielded the most home runs and was third in offense among all ballparks. Since, with a different climate pattern changing the air pressure around the ballpark, therefore changing the way the ball carries, offense in that ballpark has been bottom five in all of baseball.
How can this improve?
Another offensive metric that is up in 2026 is strikeout percentage. Batters are striking out 22.1% of the time compared to 21.9% at this time last season. This could be because of overturned calls with the new ABS system, which has helped to raise the walk percentage from 8.7% in 2025 at this time to 9.2% in 2026.
Batters are not squaring the ball up well this season, which is another big factor. At this time last season, batters have a squared up contact percentage of 33.8%, compared to 32.7% now. Batters are already striking out more than last season, and when they make contact, it’s not quality contact to be successful.
We see just how stark the difference is with teams like the Rays who largely put the ball in play and don’t strike out as much, so they score more consistently because there are people on base even if they don’t square the ball up when putting it in play, compared to the Angels who strike out a lot more and don’t score nearly as many runs. This method gets tougher when the quality of pitching is better, but getting on base makes things happen.
The Last Word
We are seeing some of the most dominant pitching in baseball as we have seen in years, but higher strikeout rates, new park factors, and lower contact rates has seen offense decline all across MLB in 2026. It make what Aaron Judge, Yordan Alverez, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, and others, do offensively on a nightly basis even more impressive. As the heat of the summer grows, so should the offense, but it is a stark difference from just this point last season with the drop of MLB’s offense.
Main Image Credit: Dennis Lee-Imagn Images
