So far, it seems to me, the 2019 baseball season has been defined by three things. This might not be the case once all is said in done. Hopefully it's not. We don't know how the playoff race is going to turn out, for one. We also don't know if we will have a particularly dramatic postseason, and we don't yet know if individual statistical and awards pursuits will end up in historically rarefied air. The draft of this season's narrative remains a work in process.
Right now, in the dog days of August, there are the three dominant themes:
1. Rampant home run hitting. Whether this is a bad, good, terrible or great thing is a matter of aesthetic preference.
2. Rampant complaining about the trends in the game. Seriously, it makes one want to figure out where the internet is plugged in and just yank the cord.
3. Super young hitters putting up All-Star-level numbers. Hopefully, on this point at least, we can agree that it's an awfully exciting development. For today, we're going to focus our attention on this.
The game is skewing younger. You hear those words over and over again. Just last week, I asked Astros manager A.J. Hinch why we're seeing so many high-powered debuts such as the one he's getting from 22-year-old Yordan Alvarez. The first words out of his mouth were, "Well, the game is skewing younger." True that.