Trending: Andrew Benintendi rediscovers his strengths, Jake Irvin finds his niche and September batters cool down

The 2024 MLB regular season is less than two weeks away and the various postseason races (and prize races) are really heating up. Everything will be decided by the end of the month. The regular-season marathon has now become a race to the end. With that in mind, here are three MLB trends to know as we near the finish line.

Benintendi’s bat has finally woken up

If you haven’t paid much attention to the White Sox lately, you’re forgiven. Aside from heading to the Modern Era’s losingest record, there’s nothing remarkable going on with the team. They’re terrible, they play boring baseball, and I’m not sure a single player will still be on the roster whenever they return to the postseason. It’s a sad state of affairs on the South Side.

The best thing to watch over the last few weeks has been Andrew Benintendi. Last year, the White Sox gave Benintendi the most expensive contract in franchise history — five years and $75 million — and they rewarded him with a .262/.326/.356 batting line and 0.2 WAR. It quickly became one of the worst contracts in baseball. As recently as July 13, Benintendi was hitting .192/.248/.292. Against all odds, his 2024 will be even worse than his 2023.

Benintendi has been a much different hitter over the last two months. Prior to Tuesday night’s game, Benintendi was hitting .279/.351/.552 with 13 home runs in his last 53 games dating back to July 14. That includes a two-homer game on Monday.

Benintendi has hit 13 home runs in his last 53 games after hitting 16 home runs in his previous 357 games since 2021. He’s never been much of a power hitter, but still, Benintendi hit five home runs in 2022 and again in 2023, and it’s hard to be even an average corner outfielder with that much power, especially when his glove is weak (minus 11 defensive runs saved in 2024).

These days, nearly every increase in power output is associated with pulling the ball more often, and that’s been the case with Benintendi. For most of his career, he’s been content serving line drives the other way to left field, which worked particularly well at Fenway Park during his time with the Red Sox. He took it to the extreme in the last few years, though, and his power disappeared.

Through July 13, Benintendi was playing at a 40.1% pull rate and a 29.2% hard-hit rate. The league average for left-handed batters is 40.4% and 38.6%, respectively. Since July 13, Benintendi has increased these numbers to a 53.8% pull rate and a 42.8% hard-hit rate. It’s an old story. Pull the ball and the power production goes up. Benintendi hasn’t sacrificed his batting average either.

What does Benintendi’s power display mean for the White Sox? Not much on the field, though perhaps it makes him more tradeable in the offseason, not that he’s particularly valuable given his contract and poor defense. Given the investment, it’s better to get it Some? Nothing compares to nothing from Benintendi. If his power breakout continues through 2025, the trade becomes more plausible.

Irvin reduces walks, solidifies spot in Nats rotation

The core of the next competitive Nationals team is coming together. Dylan Crews and James Wood are hanging out in the outfield, C.J. Abrams is at short, MacKenzie Gore and DJ Herz are in the rotation, and top infield prospect Brady House is knocking on the door at Triple-A. Washington already has a losing record this season, but you can see where things are headed.

There wasn’t much buzz around right-hander Jake Irvin and he might never pitch at the front of the rotation, but this year he has made himself part of the rotation, making 31 starts and pitching 179 1/3 innings with a league average of 4.07 ERA. On Monday night, Irvin pitched seven scoreless innings against the Mets before getting touched for a run in the eighth inning.

“Yeah, he was very hard on our righties,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after the game (via MLB.com ). “That sinker was very hard on our righties. We didn’t hit a lot of his balls hard. Today was another outing for him that we had to work hard on. Had some good at-bats, but not a lot of them were hit hard. So I think it was because of that sinker, especially against the righties.”

Irvin, 27, made 24 starts last season and threw 121 innings with a 4.61 ERA. Too often he beats himself with walks. He walked 10.2% of the batters he faced a year ago, well above the 8.6% league average. That’s a lot of free passes for a pitcher whose ground ball and strikeout rates hover around average. The free passes narrowed Irvin’s margin for error.

This season, Irvin has reduced his walk rate to 6.2%, which is 24th lowest among qualified pitchers. That’s not an elite walk rate, but it’s better than average, and much better than Irvin’s 2023 numbers. Of the 176 pitchers who throw 100 innings in both 2023 and 2024, only two have cut their walk rate more than Irvin.

Irvin has a history of strong walk rates in the Minors. For him, the 2023 walk rate is different, not 2024. It seems like a simple matter of a young pitcher finding his way in the big leagues and learning to trust his stuff. Rookie pitchers walk hitters. That’s what they do, and Irvin was no different last season. This year, he’s figuring out what works for him, and pounding the zone.

I know there’s nothing attractive about 31 league average starts, but 162 games is a lot – a lot – of innings, and it’s unrealistic to expect them all to be covered by frontline starters and shutdown relievers. Often the difference between a postseason berth and playing golf in October is the back of the rotation. What kind of production do you get from your Nos. 3-5 starters?

The Nationals selected Irvin in the fourth round of the 2018 draft and right now, he’s a league-average 30-start-a-year player. That’s a player development win, and his arrow is pointing up. Irvin may not start Game 1 when Washington returns to the postseason, but he can give them plenty of competent innings to get out of the 162-game grind, and help the Nationals get to October.

League-wide offense declined in September

Is your favorite team struggling to generate aggression in September? They’re not alone. Aggressiveness has declined across the league this month, more than you might expect with this year’s cold weather. To measure aggression, we’re going to use Weighted Runs Created Plus, or wRC+. This is a more nuanced version of OPS+

Here are the last four full seasons, covering the current September roster expansion rules (100 wRC+ is equal to league average and anything above that is above average, anything below that is below average):

Aggression was very low in April and May of 2021 (91 wRC+) but peaked at 100 wRC+ in the summer months. This could be due to the weirdness of pitcher buildup after the pandemic 2020 season. However, typically the drop in aggression from April through August and September isn’t very dramatic. Until this year.

Did baseballs change? We’ll never truly know, but to measure it we’ll use barrels, which are balls hit by bats “whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum of a .500 batting average and a .500 slugging percentage,” according to Statcast. The barrel is basically the best possible contact. Here are the average barrel distances:

The average barrel distance is constant throughout the season. A one-foot change in September is negligible. Barrels are traveling the same distance in September as they do the rest of the year. That doesn’t confirm that the baseball itself is the same. It just shows that there’s nothing weird going on. It’s not like barrels are suddenly traveling 10 feet less, you know?

September is only 18 days old, and it’s entirely possible that this is just a minor incident. There are unusual months. Whatever the reason, crime is a major factor in the increase in crime. Is September has declined. From April to August teams scored 4.43 runs per game, and now in September it’s just 4.22 runs per game. That’s one less run every five games, which might not seem like a lot, but is significant on a league-wide scale. Aggression has declined in September. Your favorite team hasn’t just forgotten how to hit.