1968 Major League Baseball season

The 1968 Major League Baseball season was the last season of the traditional two-league system before each of the leagues were split into divisions for the following season. It featured the most dominant pitching year of the modern era, and the first season of the Oakland Athletics (having moved from Kansas City after the 1967 season). The 1968 season was the last year of baseball's pre-playoffs era, in which the team that finished in first place in each league went directly to the World Series to face each other for the "World Championship." The addition of expansion teams in 1961, 1962, and 1969 finally led to the advent of a playoff system in baseball the following season.

In Major League Baseball, the trend throughout the 1960s was of increased pitching dominance, caused by enforcing a larger strike zone (top of armpit to bottom of knee) beginning in 1963. The delicate balance of power between offense and defense reached its greatest tilt in favor of the pitcher by 1968.

During what later became known as "the year of the pitcher",Bob Gibson set a modern earned run average record of 1.12 and a World Series record of 17 strikeouts in Game 1, while Series opponent Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers won 31 regular season games, the only player to reach the 30 win milestone since Dizzy Dean in 1934. Don Drysdale of the L.A. Dodgers pitched 6 consecutive shutout games in May and June, ending with 58 2/3 scoreless innings. Mickey Lolich won three complete games in the World Series, the last player as of today to do so. Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians had the American League's lowest ERA at 1.60 and allowed a batting average of only .168, a major league record. Both MVPs for that year were pitchers.

In the American League and National League combined, 339 shutouts were recorded in 1,619 regular-season games. The St. Louis Cardinals alone pitched 30 shutouts, the most in the Majors. The 472 runs allowed by the Cardinals led the MLB that year and remains the lowest total ever recorded by any Major League team in a 162-game season.

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