‘MLB’s 3-hole hitter extinction era’ has one per team, but Kim’s upward curve is bizarre [SS Focus].

Baseball has changed a lot.바카라 The standards have changed, and so have the training methods. As time goes on, pitchers throw unimaginable pitches. A 100-mile-per-hour fastball that was a rare sight 15 years ago is now a daily occurrence. Hitters focus on the long ball, as the chances of getting a hit in a row have diminished dramatically. A home run or double is more likely to score runs than a single.

As a result, batting averages are plummeting. League average batting averages have plummeted and the number of triples has dropped significantly. In 2000, the average Major League Baseball (MLB) batting average was .270. Back then, that was the benchmark for a good hitter. But from 2010 to this year, league average batting averages have hovered around .250. In 2022, the league average is 0.243, the lowest in the 21st century. There were also only 11 batters who tripled.

This year is not much different. The league average is up to .248, and there are the same 11 triples as last year. The number of triples is down to less than one per team.

Kim’s team, San Diego, is one of them. They don’t have a third baseman. Juan Soto, Fernando Tanis Jr, Manny Machado, and Zander Bogaerts are all star players in the outfield, but none of them have hit .300. However, one player who has been more valuable than any of them this year is Ha-Sung Kim, who has been on a steep upward curve. After hitting just .202 in 2021, his first year in the MLB, he’s hitting .287, the highest on the team.

He’s been on a tear lately. Through May, he was batting just .241, but his multi-hit games started piling up in June and he really caught fire after the All-Star break. In the 20 games he played in the second half, he hit .392. As his accuracy increased, so did his long balls, and he hit five home runs for a .635 slugging percentage. With an OPS of 1.135, he’s the MVP of the second half alone.

It was more of the same against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday. In his first at-bat, he lined a curveball to right field off of Bobby Miller. In his second at-bat of the inning, he lined a 101 mph fastball to left field. He’s evolving into a flawless hitter who can hit 100+ mph pitches like this.

It makes you want to see him go even higher. He could reach the endangered triple digits in the second half of the year. He’s currently 17th in the league in batting average, but a triple-digit batting average would put him in the top 10. He’s not just a high batting average hitter without a long ball, he’s a very valuable hitter who can hit for power and steal bases. Against the Dodgers on May 5, he stole a base after a single and a base after a double to put runners in scoring position.

Kim Ha-seong leads off the third inning with a single to left field and stole second base after being tagged by Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Ahmed Rosario. 24th of the season. San Diego|AFP

The timing is good. He becomes a free agent after the 2024 season. San Diego has a mutually agreeable option to extend his contract by one year, but there’s a zero percent chance he’ll exercise it at this point. He can already defend shortstop