Here's a little follow-up for you. The plot below shows both the percentage of walks each season that were bases-loaded walks (blue line) as well as the percentage of all bases-loaded plate appearances each season that resulted in walks (red line).

We see that all the way back in 1956 was the high point (post-1954) for percentage of bases-loaded plate appearances that turned into walks, with 8.6% of those PAs turning out that way. The behavior of the stat has been weird ever since. It declined fairly steadily through 1968 until suddenly jumping way up in 1969. That change was probably due to the lowering of the pitcher's mound--with pitchers having less of an advantage they probably nibbled a little more, hence the increase in walks. The rate remained steady for a while until suddenly falling sharply in 1982 and then regaining step-wise in 1983, 1984, and 1985. There was another huge drop in 2001 and an increase in the last 4 seasons. The values for 2000 and 2009 are the highest since the 1959 season.

The percentage of all walks that were bases-loaded walks tracks very similarly to the first stat we discussed. It might appear to vary less but that's just because the data is more compressed at the bottom of the graph. The only significant difference is that the 2009 figure of 2.36% of all walks coming in bases-loaded situations is a post-1954 high, and this means an underlying shift in the frequency of walks and/or the frequency of bases loaded situations.

I have a knee-jerk response to argue that more bases-loaded walks is a bad thing. Nobody likes to watch their team issue a based-loaded walk to the opponent. But as was pointed out my a commenter on the previous post, giving up a bases-loaded walk beats the heck out of giving up a 3-run double. In periods of high offense, it may make sense in specific batter-pitcher matchups to keep the ball off the plate and hope the batter makes an out. In the "worst" case a run is walked in.

Incidentally, you don't need to use the Play Index to get the data used for these plots. The total number of walks as well as the number of plate appearances and walks with the bases loaded can be found on the ML Batting Splits pages.

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