LOS ANGELES — Rich Hill needed a moment to think about this one. Neither the question nor the answer had occurred to him before: Why is Major League Baseball on pace to set a record for wild pitches in 2018?

Hill is 39 years old. His professional career began in 2002. He paused.

“I think it’s a combination of multiple things,” he said.

This pause was nearly the universal response. Between players, coaches, executives and analysts, no one had a quick, one-size-fits-all answer at the ready.

By themselves, wild pitches are not a problem Major League Baseball is attempting to solve. They won’t be a point of contention during the next round of collective bargaining. Yet they are gaining foothold almost without notice – a harmless Trojan horse gradually infiltrating baseball’s style of play and, to a lesser extent, its pace. MLB has determined that pace of play is a problem worth solving, perhaps by tweaking the rules to the game itself.

According to the venerable BaseballReference.com, the rate of wild pitches swung like a pendulum every year from 1964-2005, typically finding its equilibrium at or around 0.3 per game. The rate has risen steadily every season since. If the current rate of 0.38 wild pitches per game holds, it will be the highest in any season since 1891, when the pitcher stood 50 feet from home plate and catchers first began to wear oversized padded mitts.

With no sweeping rule change or catcher’s equipment to point to, the rise in wild pitches had no convenient scapegoat. Here, then, are several smaller scapegoats offered by a variety of sources.

FASTER FASTBALLS

Average fastball speed has risen annually since reliable pitch speed data became publicly available. According to FanGraphs.com, the average fastball in 2018 is clocking in at a record 93.7 mph.

“If they miss completely to the other side of the plate,” Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said, “the harder you throw, the less time even the catcher has to react. I see a lot of that: just misfires more than anything, trying to go to one side of the plate.”

Yet the majority of wild pitches are too low for the catcher, not too high or too wide. The rate of fastballs in the dirt has not correlated with the rise in wild pitches, according to MLB’s Statcast data. Higher, wider and faster fastballs likely bear a marginal responsibility at best.

The St. Louis Cardinals, led by triple-digit flamethrower Jordan Hicks, lead MLB in average fastball speed, per FanGraphs. They were tied for 12th in wild pitches through Tuesday.

MORE BREAKING BALLS

Statcast data shows which pitch types are bouncing in the dirt each season, and breaking balls in the dirt – sliders and curveballs – are on the rise. These are the only pitches that are bouncing more each year, but they’re also being thrown more now than ever.

In 2005, 14.8 percent of all pitches were recorded as sliders; this year, that percentage is up to 16.3.

In 2005, 8.4 percent of all pitches were recorded as curveballs; this year that figure is up to 10.3.

“I think (catchers) can understand that certain (pitchers) throw their breaking ball a higher percentage of time in the dirt,” Hill said, “and other (pitchers) can use the top of the strike zone for a more traditional ‘perfect strike.’ … I have been spiking it lately, but over my career, I’m not a guy who throws it in the dirt a lot.”

Through this lens, the wild pitch appears to be a calculated risk on the pitchers’ part. In 2005, batters swung at 21.5 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, per FanGraphs. This year, that figure is up to 30.4 percent. Wild pitches might be a negative in isolation, but they are not without strategy.

YOUNGER PLAYERS

The Pittsburgh Pirates have baseball’s youngest pitching staff this year according to BaseballReference.com’s data, with an average age of 26.5. It so happens that the Pirates have also thrown more wild pitches than any team in baseball.

“Guys getting rushed to the big leagues could be an issue,” Hill said.

The effect of fastballs that are too high and wide to catch might apply here, too. Even though the Cardinals have baseball’s hardest-throwing pitching staff at an average of 93.7 mph, the Pirates (93.5) aren’t far behind.

LIMITING MOUND VISITS

MLB did institute one new rule prior to the season, limiting teams to six mound visits per nine-inning game with only a handful of exceptions.

Mound visits were used often to review the sign for each pitch if a pitcher or catcher was confused, or to change signs if the other team seemed to have stolen theirs. Players expressed fears in spring training that the new mound-visit limit would discourage such visits. In turn, they feared catchers would get “crossed up” by pitchers more often – or more signs would be stolen.

Wild pitches that result from cross-ups are difficult to quantify, but there appears to be some truth to this.

“We’re very concerned about having really tough signs,” Dodgers bench coach Bob Geren said, “and signs are more complicated than they used to be. A few (wild pitches) happened that way.”

Chicago Cubs catching coach Mike Borzello said he’s noticed more cross-ups this season too, but “I don’t think that would be enough to push the number (of wild pitches) that high.”

SCORING

Passed balls and wild pitches are related. Any pitch that goes untouched by the batter, and eludes the catcher with a runner on base, is one or the other. So what’s the difference between a passed ball and wild pitch? That’s up to the official scorer, who might be a different person from day to day, even within the same ballpark.

The margin for error here is obvious. Baseball Prospectus crunched the data in 2015 and concluded “that official scorers are doing a good job – or at least being conservative – in assigning passed balls to catchers.” Maybe they aren’t the ones to blame.

BP went on to conclude that knuckleballs played a significant role in balls getting past the catcher. But with knuckleball pitchers on the decline, a rise in wild pitches is the last thing the data would predict.

Maybe there’s another source of wild pitches eluding the data, the executives, and the men wearing uniforms.

“Overall, I wouldn’t say there’s any one reason,” Honeycutt said. “A lot depends on each staff that you have.”