We all know that modern baseball is different from past baseball. Today's hitters and pitchers are a testament to that fact as hitter hit home runs at rates higher than any of that in the past and pitchers are striking out hitters at rates that only continues to grow with no clear end at sight. Of course, we know the reason for this rise, as sabermetrics highly values home runs and strikeouts more than other types of hits. Before the rise of Moneyball, strikeouts were seen as the worst possible outcome that a hitter could possibly accomplish, and players were encouraged to swing at even the most far-reaching pitches in order to get a hit. Steals were quite more frequently back then and the shift has not been properly introduced yet into the MLB.

With the advent of the sabermetrics, players are now to embrace the power trend that many other players have not been able to. Film and video analysis have been utilized as another tool for improvement. Pitchers and hitters are able to locate each other's weak spots much more quickly and the sport of baseball has fast pitches and even faster hits that all happen under the blink of the eye. Of course, the new trend in baseball of only hitting dingers and getting strikeouts does not mean that all pitchers and hitters follow it. For example, two of the best hitters from the 2019 season, Ketel Marte and Jeff McNeil, have BB% that are way below their local competitors (in wRC+), yet they have still managed to flourish in the most competitive baseball league has seen.

When I analyze the new trend in baseball, I think that the biggest changes in today's game (in terms of hitting) has to be the decline of steals and bunts and the rise of the home runs. Sabermetrics has already proved that steals and bunts do not tremendously affect the outcome of a baseball game, so in result of that, most baseball players have started to abandon that approach. They would rather focus on something such as launch angle and exit velocity so that they hit more line drives for hits. In terms of getting more walks, I don't think that all hitters have started to embrace the getting walks trends, as we do see quite a lot of young players who are aggressive at the plate and still perform as well as the top players in the league. But the main similarity between all of these hitters is that they hit dingers.