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Less than a month into the 2014 baseball season, we’re already reveling in the game’s many intricacies. One trend in particular has reared its ugly head with all the subtlety of a: Nobody, it seems, can hit worth a damn.

Through Monday,* major leaguers were hitting just.248. The MLB-wide batting average hasn’t been below.250 once this millennium. In fact, over a full season, that mark would rank as the sixth-lowest over the last 50 years: Season BA 1968.237 1967.242 1972.244 1965.246 1963.246 2014.248 1969.248 1971.249 1966.249 1964.250 Source: ESPN Stats & Info Granted, weird things often happen in short time frames. But take a look at the five lowest MLB-wide batting averages from Opening Day through this point in the season, also since 1964: Season BA 1968.229 1972.238 1965.240 1971.241 1966/1991.242 Source: Elias This year’s.248 mark barely misses the cut.

Note the specific seasons that appear on both charts, though. The bulk of results came during historically poor periods for offense in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. The top year on each list is the, the 1968 season that saw Carl Yastrzemski post the lowest batting average ever to lead the league (.301) and Bob Gibson deliver the lowest ERA ever for a qualified starting pitcher (1.12).

If 2014 is lumping in with a season that featured mounds as high as skyscrapers, something’s definitely going on. ♦♦♦ [mlbvideo id=”32298071″ width=”500″ height=”280″ /] The first culprit is rising strikeout totals, as hitters have been whiffing more often than ever over the past few seasons. Through this many games in 2006, batters were striking out 18.7 percent of the time while netting a.265 batting average. That first figure has soared to 23.3 percent in 2014, an all-time high for this point in the season.

In an attempt to figure out why hitters are striking out more than ever, Grantland contributor Ben Lindbergh hosted a on Baseball Prospectus’s Effectively Wild podcast with Fox Sports writer Rob Neyer, Brooks Baseball and Baseball Prospectus contributor Harry Pavlidis, former major league pitcher Brian Bannister, and physics professor/baseball researcher Dr. Each of the panelists had a somewhat different theory. Pavlidis noted the introduction of PITCHf/x to umpires’ training programs in 2009, a move he says prompted umpires to start calling a larger and more standardized strike zone. Pavlidis found that 57 percent of the pitches that hitters take now get called as strikes, compared to 50 percent right before PITCHf/x supplanted QuesTec for umpire reviews. Nathan noted that pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Teams are drafting and developing, and the net effect has been faster average pitch speeds, including more fastballs touching triple digits. According to ESPN Stats & Info research, the average velocity for all pitch types this season is 87.3 mph, while the average pitcher’s maximum pitch velocity is 94.1 mph.

Compare that to April 2011, when those averages were 86.7 and 93.7, respectively. While those differences might seem negligible, Nathan pointed out that batters only have a fraction of a second to react to pitches. That means hitters’ muscle memory has been conditioned toward a certain pitch speed over thousands of repetitions, and even the slightest change can throw off their timing. Bannister noted that PED testing has hurt hitter performance and thus offensive results, though that topic’s a bit of a puzzler, since more stringent testing would presumably affect pitcher PED usage rates as well, and thus possibly deaden overall pitch speeds. Lindbergh suggested that one of the mantras of the analytical age — that high-strikeout pitchers are highly desirable, but high-strikeout hitters aren’t necessarily a problem — could be affecting personnel decisions.

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Neyer, meanwhile, subscribed to an all-of-the-above theory, claiming that the rise in strikeouts has been somewhat organic. ♦♦♦ The second factor is. Baseball Info Solutions tracks all manner of defensive data, including team-by-team shift totals and the impact those shifts have on batting averages. In 2011, teams executed 2,357 shifts, including Ted Williams Shifts (three infielders on one side of second base) and Partial Ted Williams Shifts (at least two infielders significantly out of their normal fielding positions or an infielder — usually the second baseman — 10-plus feet into the outfield).

In 2012, that number nearly doubled, to 4,577. Our love to admire lyrics. Another big spike occurred in 2013, with the total number of shifts climbing to 8,134. We’re on pace for a 57 percent surge in 2014, with the total number of shifts projected to be 12,737 by year’s end.