Baseball, as they say, is a cyclical sport. Indeed, in Major League Baseball, there has been a constant throughout history: the amount of offense is always going to be cyclical, meaning that for a period of years, hitters will dominate, but at some point, the pendulum swings back the pitcher’s way for a period of time.

That is less true in independent baseball with constant roster turnover, meaning that offense often goes up and down year-to-year, though some cycles are often visible, though maybe on shorter timelines.

Indeed, in the American Association, last year was the league’s best pitching season since 2019. However, if you’ve been paying attention to the scoreboard, you’ll know that’s not the case this year. Sure enough, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, offense has indeed gone up significantly this season.

Looking at the numbers

For the most part, the American Association was a hitter’s league for it’s first decade, averaging over five runs per game all but one season from 2006-14. Offense peaked in 2011, when teams scored a league-record 5.71 runs per game and the league posted a 5.08 ERA.

Not surprisingly, at the time, the AA at the time featured four hitter-friendly environments in Texas, including notoriously friendly El Paso (the DIablos allowed a then-record 815 runs) and Amarillo (the Sox scored a then-record 650 runs. As the Texas teams disappeared, though, and the league shifted to cooler environments further north, pitching caught up over the end of the 2010’s, with the lowest-scoring year coming in 2017 (4.77 runs per game), though 2015 set the league-wide ERA record of 4.21.

Offense perked back up after COVID, with league ERAs over 5.00 in both 2021 and ’22 as pitchers were picked up by MLB teams left and right. However, 2025’s 4.91 runs per game and 4.51 ERA were both the lowest by the AA since 2019. This year, though, paints a different story:

	Runs/ Game	Hits/ Game	HR/ Game	Walks/ Game	Strikeouts/ Game	AVG	OBP	SLUG	OPS
2025	4.91	8.50	0.88	3.76	7.94	.255	.340	.391	.730
2026	5.70	9.24	1.02	4.14	7.87	.271	.361	.425	.785
% Change	+16.1	+8.7	+15.9	+10.1	-0.1	+6.3	+6.2	+8.7	+7.3

This year is on pace to finish just behind 2011 (5.71 runs per game) for the highest-scoring season in league history. The current league ERA of 5.34 is on pace to surpass 2022’s current high-water mark of 5.13 (followed closely by 5.11 in 2021).

Why is offense exploding?

The simple answer is this: pitching is not as good this year. Period. Why? Well, there are a few plausible explanations behind that:

Attrition: Last year, a total of 22 pitchers threw 100 innings in the AA, which isn’t the best indicator of effectiveness, but at the end of the day, you gotta be getting outs to eat innings, so we’ll start there.

Out of those 22 pitchers, exactly half of them did not return to the AA for the 2026 season. Two of them (Julian Garcia and Josh Hendrickson) started the year in affiliated ball. Two (Tyler Jandron and Jared Wetherbee) went to Mexico. Kyle Marman is in Taiwan. Only Spencer Adams (in the Atlantic League) is still pitching domestically. Four of them apparently hung them up (including Austin Drury, who is playing Banana Ball).

Contract Purchase: MLB contract purchases this year further thinned out the ranks. This weekend, Lake Country ace Luke Hansel was signed by the Colorado Rockies, while reigning Pitcher of the Year Jake Dykhoff (to Baltimore) was picked up after one start.

Among all players, a total of 20 AA players (as in, at the time under contract with an AA team) have been signed by an MLB team since January 1, with 15 of them being pitchers. Not to mention, established All-Star hurlers Landen Bourassa and Garrett Alexander have also headed south to Mexico since Opening Day.

Less willingness to play: In an era where more pitchers than ever are getting hurt, more and more hurlers are more inclined to work out at training facilities such as Driveline or Tread and try to get signed by an MLB team, rather than go to an Indy ball team where Trackman metrics may be more difficult to acquire and overuse/misuse is more likely.

Not to throw anyone under the bus, but simply put, some pitchers would rather throw a climate-controlled bullpen session with real-time feedback being sent straight to MLB scouts, rather than an Indy ball manager trying to win a game bringing in a guy out of the bullpen for the fourth time in five days.

More demand: Additionally, with more pitchers getting hurt, MLB teams need more pitchers to eat minor league innings. Add in the fact that this year, there are once again 52 teams across the four primary independent leagues (AA, Atlantic, Frontier, and Pioneer Leagues). Including lower-level leagues like the USPBL, Pecos, Empire, and Mavericks League, that’s another 31 teams competing for a pool of arms that feels shallower than recent years. Oh yeah, and that list doesn’t even include the 20 Mexican League teams mining a considerable amount of American talent.

Immigration issues: Lastly, given increased tensions and difficulties in the immigration process to the U.S., it’s more difficult to bring in international players than it was a few years. Players need a P1A Sports Visa to play in the United States, but an application (which the signing team submits on behalf of the player) now costs over $1,500. The process is often not quick either and sometimes takes months.

In one example, in 2024, the Kansas City Monarchs signed three international players, but their visa was held up for months until mid-August, meaning those players were only available for three weeks, at which point the Monarchs were already effectively out of contention. Consequently, some managers may not even bother with international players due to the cost and the hassle, further limiting your pool of options.

What effects could we see?

First and foremost, I want to indicate that the factors I listed above are not unique to the American Association. They apply to all independent leagues and all of them are dealing with increased offense at varying levels:

Runs per game across the four MLB Partner Leagues

	American Association	Atlantic League	Frontier League	Pioneer League
2025	4.91	5.77	5.54	8.08
2026	5.70	6.27	6.55	8.63
% Change	+16.1	+8.7	+18.2	+6.8

Notable in the last two columns, the Pioneer League shed three Colorado-based teams (all of whom played at elevations above 4,600 feet) for two lower-elevation California teams and a travel team primarily based in California, muting their offense increase. In reality, the nine returning teams are allowing almost two more runs per game, a 27% increase. Meanwhile, the FL’s stunning increase is with the exact same 18-team lineup as last season, meaning there’s no geography-based reason to explain away their boost in scoring.

What does this mean for the American Association? Let’s look:

Pitching pipeline drying up: Well, the Pioneer and Frontier Leagues have produced a fair amount of pitchers that move on to the AA (and Atlantic League) for higher competition and higher pay. These player aren’t necessarily higher-end pieces (though some are), but those pools are important for filling out depth on pitching staffs, such as middle relievers and back-half starters a well as finding grinders who are willing to come back for multiple seasons. Simply put, that pool is rapidly getting a lot shallower and a lot worse, meaning we could see offense spike even more in the next couple years as those arms drift into the AA.

Hitting (and hitters) are devalued: As it is, it is much harder for a hitter to get signed out of independent baseball than it is for a pitcher, which is not a new development.

These days, Pioneer League hitters are basically written off en masse by MLB scouts (only four PBL players were signed by MLB teams in 2025) because it’s hard to stand out when 83 qualified hitters hit over .300 (and 25 hit over .350) in one season, which happened last year. In recent years, many of them have struggled to hit in other independent leagues, let alone in affiliated ball.

If American Association hitting starts to spiral out of control, that same effect could happen here as well. Even then, Ryan Hernandez is hitting .400 with 13 home runs and 38 RBI in just 25 games and is still a member of the Lake Country DockHounds, so maybe that’s already happening.

Records continue to fall: The other effects are a little more troubling, but this is at least the more fun outcome. Just last week, two major AA records fell, one of them twice.

On Tuesday night, Griffin Doersching drove in an AA record 10 runs for Milwaukee. Two days later, the Kansas City Monarchs clubbed a league-record eight home runs at Fargo-Moorhead. Two days after that in Sioux Falls, the Monarchs hit eight homers again.

Hernandez is on pace to obliterate the single-season home run and RBI records (currently 33 homers and 106 RBI, respectively) as well. His offense in Lake Country is on pace for 756 runs and 181 home runs, which would also comfortably break the current standards (696 runs and 167 home runs).

Of course, we also still have three-quarters of a season left to play. By Labor Day, we could be wondering where all the runs went.

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