I've had baseball running through me as long as I can remember. And to me, playing physically and playing baseball videogames went hand in hand. Playing one made me want to do the other in a dangerous feedback loop.

There have been a lot of great baseball games in that time. Bases Loaded, Ken Griffey Presents, All-Star Baseball 2000, MVP Baseball 2005. Now MLB The Show has primary control of the market and has improved over time, and I've now been playing MLB The Show 18 for the past while.

One mode that I frequent is Road to the Show, where you create a custom player and follow their career arc. So you bat, run and field as them and skip over the rest of the plays.

After a few seasons riddled with injuries, Jasper "Parsnip" Barnes has been having a hell of a 2022 season. Looking to bat .400 and challenge both the single season stolen base, and home run records is a lot on its own. Into mid-August, about 2/3 through the season, though, I've now noticed something I've never seen before in a baseball game



That's right, with Barnes at the plate, I've garnered more walks than strikeouts. There is a lot of variation to each and every baseball game out there, but the one constant across all of them is that when a human takes control, nobody walks.



And yet, with a 9.8% walk rate and 9.3% strikeout rate, for the first time ever, walks are outpacing strikeouts. Oh what a time to be alive.