Reality Check: Walks

I was listening to SiriusXM's MLB Network Radio the other day. (I almost always hear these things in my car, where I can't take notes, so we're relying on my memory here.) The hosts were discussing how to speed up the pace of play at the major league level. One of the comments was something to the effect of, "One of the key problems is all the walks."

Here is a graph of walks per game, from 1901 to 2014:

Source of data: baseball-reference.com

I'm not going to belabor this. Just note that:

1. Walks per game have declined for five years in a row.
2. There were 2.9 walks per game in 2014. That's the first time there were fewer than three walks per game since 1968, and only the sixth time in the past 90 years.