The home run epidemic continues unabated. This is neither good news nor bad. It simply is what's happening in the game right now. If you are freaked out about the number of long balls this season and were hoping that things might settle down over the second half, that's not what has happened. It has been the opposite.
The homer surge has only become more virulent during the month since the All-Star break. Teams are averaging nearly 1½ homers per game and are scoring five runs per contest during that span. The big league ERA since the festivities in Cleveland is 4.65. If that were the season's overall ERA, it would be the highest since 2008.
Lately, I've picked up on a number of pointed discussions in and out of the media, wondering which is more juiced: the ball or the players. While I can't say with any degree of certainty that a large population of players are not circumventing baseball's PED testing safeguards, or are imbued with some kind of new undetectable designer performance enhancer, I can say I don't really care one way or the other. It seems unlikely. But to suggest that such a thing accounts for the spike in homers we saw in 2017, which seemed to recede a bit last year but has surged back with a vengeance this season and -- coincidentally -- spread to Triple-A the very same season they started using MLB balls at that level, well, it seems like a pretty dense notion.
We've been over this again and again, but to me there are only three plausible explanations for the pattern and abruptness of these changes in home run rates: the ball, something to do with atmospheric/weather conditions and stylistic trends. (Obviously a fourth possibility would be some mix of the above.) The climate-related theory is at present hard to dig into because, as far as I know, there hasn't been an expansive study done on that. So let's put a pin in that concept for now.
But just bear in mind a couple of things under the climate umbrella: In July, there were 1.44 homers hit per game. (We're at a staggering 1.53 so far in August.) That July rate is higher than June's 1.41 mark, and June's 1,142 total homers were more than have ever been hit in a month (breaking the record set in May). July just didn't have as many games because of the All-Star break.
The weather factor has been on my mind because, this week, we got word that July was the hottest month we've seen on Earth since we started keeping track of such things in 1880. And, not to make light of that alarming news, it made me realize that we've been keeping careful records on baseball since 1871 -- longer than we've tracked the weather.
Stylistic trends, such as heightened pitching velocity, all-or-nothing approaches at the plate and a new emphasis on launch-friendly swings, have surely contributed at some level to the home run numbers. Each of these things merits watching and studying. None of them, for me, explains the degree of what we've seen and how suddenly we've seen it.
Only changes in the ball explain these things to me. Studies have shown the ball is behaving differently, the commissioner has acknowledged that it is behaving differently and anecdotal evidence from hitters and pitchers alike underscores that explanation.
There was some interesting and kind of exciting news on this front in a USA Today story last week. The bottom line: Some scientists who have been studying the performance of baseballs think they have figured out something. They aren't currently willing to call it a "fix" but there might be a lot more news on this coming in the weeks ahead.
Let us now proceed into the realm of speculation. Let's say these scientists have solved the mystery of the soaring baseballs and very soon, Major League Baseball will be able to dictate a new set of specifications that will allow -- for the first time -- the league to decide just how the game will be played on the field.
I've written before how I think it should be played. From all of this, you would have to conclude that I'm among those who see a problem with the game at the moment and that a fix is required. This is mostly the case -- I prefer a more balanced game and, more importantly, I think a more balanced game with a wider diversity in playing styles and strategies is better for baseball as an industry. But, for me, baseball remains a beautiful thing and what we're discussing here are merely degrees of goodness.
Not everyone feels there is any problem in the first place. There are some who have no issue at all with what's transpiring on the field at the moment. And sometimes you can understand why. The best recent example of that was the slate of games from last Saturday, Aug. 10, when rookies Yordan Alvarez of the Astros and Aristides Aquino of the Reds both cracked three homers, the first time two rookies have done that on the same day. When Aquino's last bomb against the Cubs rocketed to a part of Great American Ball Park that balls simply should not be hit to, I got goosebumps. This homer-happy style does have its charms.
Still, by and large, it seems as if the consensus is that it would be better for the sport if we were to have more balls in play. That means fewer strikeouts, but fewer homers as well, and the two categories often go hand in hand. That would mean coming generations of hitters would have to prove to team analysts that high-contact, gap hitters still have an important role in a consistent, winning offense. The math behind their case would be greatly enhanced if the percentage of fly balls that currently drift beyond outfield walls were to drop.
If baseball were able to truly get a handle on year-over-year changes to the ball, then we could fix on a percentage that enhances this quest for balance. What would that percentage be? It would not be what we've seen in 2019. This season, according to FanGraphs, fly balls have ended up as home runs 15.3% of the time. The data goes back only to 2002, but this is easily the highest figure to date. The next-highest figure (13.7%) occurred during the aforementioned 2017 campaign, and the four highest totals have come in the past four seasons, including this one.
During the seasons from 2002 to 2015, before things started to get out of control, the rate of homers on fly balls was an aggregate 10.4% -- nearly 5 percentage points less than this season. That's an enormous change, obviously. Thus when I debate this topic with people, I sometimes get something like this: "If we deaden the ball, we're looking at another dead ball era." I doubt it, and I'll take you through why I doubt it and why I would have no problem if baseball selected that 10.4% figure as its target specification for the desired rate of homers on fly balls. In fact, let's call the reinvented ball that: the 10.4.
This season, 45.2% of all runs scored have come on homers. That's not just an all-time high figure, it's almost surreal. I calculated that figure for each season going back to 1925, using the play index at Baseball-Reference.com. (There are some missing homers in there, so I estimated for a few early seasons by looking at the distribution of solo homers, grand slams, etc. for the homers that are in the database.) The five highest totals have come in the past five seasons. Ten years ago, the figure was 35.5%, 20 years ago it was 36.1%, and 30 years ago it was 28.1%. The game, at the big league level, has never been more reliant on homers when it comes to turning the scoreboard.
So what does it look like if suddenly, instead of 15% of fly balls being home runs, only 10% are homers? Most of the balls that stay in the park would end up as long outs. In theory, you might have more sacrifice flies, and a few more balls that bang off the wall for doubles and triples, but when you look at the changes in fly ball activity from last season to this season, it's kind of hard not to conclude that most of these borderline homers would end up as outs:
There have been some small changes in the rates of singles, doubles, sacrifice flies, etc., on fly balls, but mostly a lot of fly balls that were outs last year have been homers this year. So if we drop the home run rate on fly balls from 15.3% to 10.4%, that's a lot of additional fly outs. And whether or not you love home runs, I think we can agree that they are at least more exciting than fly outs.
Working with this season's numbers, I tried to estimate how league-level numbers would change if hitters were producing the same number of fly balls as they are right now, but only 10.4% of them were leaving the yard. That kind of scenario might be what would come into play if baseball suddenly (and intentionally) introduced a 10.4 ball.
Homers are hits, of course, so this drastic reduction impacts batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage as well. And, most importantly, it impacts run scoring. Let's first do the before and after comparison just with the basic slash categories for this season:
Yes, it's a bit ugly. Remember, in this scenario, batters are still trying to launch the ball and pitchers are still racking up strikeouts at the record rate they are this season (and every season). All that has changed is that these dynamics are resulting in fewer homers. The batting average would be baseball's lowest since 1968. The on-base percentage would be the worst since 1972. The slugging percentage would be the worst since 1992.
Using a runs created formula, I calculated that we'd be averaging 4.04 runs per game, and the league-level ERA would be 3.76. We have to go back to 1976 for that level of run scoring. And, frankly, I think this is probably a pretty accurate guess about what the transition period might look like if baseball were to adopt a 10.4 ball. I don't think that's a problem because these numbers are merely the jumping-off point for the next stage in baseball's never-ending evolution.
All of the numbers here are very similar to the way baseball looked just a few years ago, in 2014. There was a little more than a strikeout fewer per game, so batting averages were better, but the collective slash line that season was .251/.314/.386. Teams averaged 4.07 runs per game and the leaguewide ERA was 3.74. That season, just 9.5% of fly balls left the yard and just 33.4% of runs scored via the long ball. Sure, there was a fair amount of hand-wringing over the declining levels of offense in 2014, but now that we have some distance, and see what we're dealing with at the moment, was it really so bad?
The transition to a deadened ball would have its awkward stages, to be sure. But teams want to win, right? And to win, you've got to score runs. So traits other than producing a high rate of homers per fly ball would move up the scouting hierarchy. There would be more value in a high-contact, line-drive approach. In other words, teams would adapt to the new climate, as they have always done. And when they do, baseball would (hopefully) end up in a more balanced -- and marketable -- place.
For me, the bottom line is that the downside of not "fixing" the ball outweighs anything that might result from some kind of transitional phase stemming from a deadened ball. If the scientists have discovered a fix, then there is no reason for baseball not to implement it. And as soon as possible, please.
Extra innings
1. This week, for good reason, everyone has had some fun with how the Yankees have treated the Orioles like a cat toy this season. Here's some terrific context from my cohort David Schoenfield. Because I feel left out, allow me to pile on.
Entering their series finale Wednesday against the Orioles, the Yankees had 735 plate appearances this season against Baltimore. It caught my eye because that's roughly the number of plate appearances a league-leading player gets over the course of the season. Last season, Francisco Lindor led the AL with 745 plate appearances; Trea Turner led the NL with 740. That means you could take that very specific snapshot of the Yankees' batting split against the Orioles and think of it as the end-of-season numbers for a top-of-the-order, every-day player.
The numbers for this fictional player: A slash line of .307/.390/.645, with 60 homers, 141 RBIs and 148 runs scored. That is the monster the Orioles' staff created during its encounters this season with the Yankees. I ran a query for players who have had a season with at least a 1.100 OPS, 60 homers, 140 RBIs and 140 runs. There have been two: Sammy Sosa (2001) and Babe Ruth (1927).
So, basically, as a team, this year's entire Yankees roster of batters put up a 1927 Babe Ruth season against the Orioles. Think of that the next time you visit Camden Yards and swing by the Ruth Birthplace Museum.
2. To calculate the yearly rate of homers on fly balls you hopefully read about above, I used the play index to tell me how many homers were hit given each number of runners on base. There were a few offshoots of this data that caught my eye. One was this: This year, baseball has averaged 1.568 runs per home run. During the 95 years for which we have data, that ranks 84th. To be honest, I thought it would be lower than that.
The portion of homers that have been solo shots (58.6%) ranks 13th out of those 95 seasons. It's a high figure but it's not as bad as recent seasons. Five of the highest rates of solo homers have occurred since 2013, with 2013 ranking No. 1 in the data. The only other period during the last century that we've seen lower runs-per-homers totals have come during the pitching-skewed 1960s.
3. Earlier this season, I wrote a big feature on hitting trends, and the hopes for combating the strikeout era. One of the threads in that piece was Albert Pujols' battle to remain a career .300 hitter, a battle it seemed inevitable that he would lose. In fact, I calculated a rough estimate of "sometime in August" that he would slip below. Well, I'm guardedly optimistic that won't happen. It would take a massive slump for it to happen in August and there is a real chance Pujols might remain at a rounded-off career average of .300 for the rest of the season.
After Wednesday's 2-for-4 performance against Pittsburgh, Pujols raised his season average to .242 and became the all-time hits leader among foreign-born players (3,168). His career average stood at .30022 at that point. At his current pace, Pujols would get about 117 more at-bats this season. To keep his average rounding off to .300, he would need 28 hits -- or a .239 average -- over the rest of the season.
Maybe it's too early to give up on Pujols' .300 quest. But probably not, since he's planning to play two more seasons beyond this one. And that's fine -- .300 or not, we need all the Albert Pujols we can get.