Joey Gallo of the Twins hit his third home run of the season as the Twins are out to a 6-0 lead over the Marlins in the fourth inning. Gallo now has four hits on the season, the other being a double. I wonder if he’ll hit a triple before he collects his first single.
Ronald Acuna Jr. and Matt Olson of the Braves open the game against the Nationals with back-to-back home runs. The hit mostly singles in game one, but they did not waste anytime on Saturday picking up their first two long balls of the season. They lead Washington 2-0 in the bottom of the first.
The Yankees doubled the number of Guardians home runs in the regular season, and they’ve done it in this game as well. Anthony Rizzo just went deep to rightfield in the bottom of the sixth inning, driving in two to extend the Yankees lead to 4-1. Harrison Bader homered earlier for the first New York run.
In the 2022 regular season home runs produced 41.7% of the RBI recorded in the season. That’s the lowest percentage since the 39.2% in 2015. My regular season batting event data goes back to 1974. Before 2016, the percent of RBI on HR never reached 40%. It has not fallen below 40% since. Yesterday, home runs produced 15 of the 24 RBI, 62.5%. I doubt that number will stay that high, but it shows the value of hitting home runs against good pitching. The four games average six runs scored and 12.5 hits. In an environment like that, one run strategies and long balls become more important. Teams went for the long ball.
Note that this higher rate of RBI on HR should be true in the post-season in general, as post-season teams tend to employee good pitchers and good power hitters. My post-season event data goes back to 2002, and in that time the regular seasons had a HR RBI percentage of 39.4% versus 43.2% in the post-season.
I have now seen the big home run records starting with Hank Aaron. I don’t know if the TV was on when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run, but at a year and half old I would not remember it. I did watch Aaron break Babe Ruth‘s career home run record. I saw Mark McGwire break Maris’s single season record. I saw Barry Bonds break both McGwire’s single season record and Aaron’s career record. Now I saw the ball off the bat of Judge break the AL record.
My family is very longed lived. I wonder who will be next?
The Braves beat the Mets 5-3 on Sunday night to take a commanding two game lead in the NL East and win the season series with New York for the tie-breaker. That means the Braves need to win just one more game, or have the lose, for Atlanta to win the NL East and a first round bye.
The Braves out-homered the Mets 7-3 in the series, and their ability to hit the long ball gives them an advantage in series in which they face excellent starting pitching. If the Braves can match those starters, as they did in this series, then the home runs can make the difference. When base runners are scarce, the long ball puts runs on the board without a long offensive series. The Braves will be tough in the post-season again.
The Braves lead the Nationals 8-0 in the sixth inning as Atlanta hit three home runs at Nationals Park. It’s not really a surprise, as Atlanta came into the game leading the National League in home runs hit, while the Nationals led the NL in home runs allowed. The homers drove in five of the eight runs.
Update: The Braves win 8-0. They are now one game behind the Mets in the NL East, and one game down in the AFILC.
Aaron Judge of the Yankees just hit his second home run of the game to give New York a 10-4 lead at Milwaukee and bring his season total to 59 HR. The Yankees now own the top four single season AL home run slots, with Roger Maris at 61, Babe Ruth at 60 and 59, and now Judge at 59. The fans in Milwaukee were chanting MVP! MVP! as Judge rounded the bases. He’s now three for four in the game, making a potential triple crown a bit more likely.
Update: Judge comes up with two on and two out in the ninth and lines a two run double to the gap in leftfield. He’s now four for five on the day, batting .316.
Update: Milwaukee did not give up. Down 12-6 in the bottom of the ninth, they load the bases with none out and score two runs. The go down with the bases loaded for a 12-8 final.
Judge now owns a 0.76 probability of hitting at least 62 home runs.
In recent weeks I keep noticing batters coming up with the best game scores of the day as being power hitters who do a poor job of getting on base. To be a bit more technical, players with a high isolated power (Slugging Percentage – Batting average, or Extra Bases/ AB) and a low OBP. In my lifetime, these hitter were rare. Even sluggers who hit for a low batting average struck enough fear into the opposition that they were often walked enough to produce a good OBP (the Ken Phelps school of hitters).
Has a new type of hitter really emerged, or is this just an random sampling looking like a trend?
The study looks at players with at least 300 PA in a season. They must have an isolated power greater than .200 and an OBP less then .300. The query yields 148 player seasons since 1920. Sixty eight of those seasons occurred from 2011 on. In fact there have been at least four such players in every full season since 2011. The only season outside of that range with as many players as five players was the 1986 season, with a total of six.
The first such player was Jack Graham in 1946, who had a very short career. The 1946 season was an inflection point as players started to return from WWII. Graham returned to the majors in 1949 for a full season with the Browns, but was out of the majors after that.
The 1955 season was the first year with multiple players as Bill Wilson, Don Zimmer, and Del Crandall all make the cut. Zimmer played in twelve season where his pop was his biggest offensive weapon. Multiple players do not appear in a season again until 1982, when Dave Kingman and a young Gary Gaetti make the list. Kingman makes the list five times, tied with Steve Balboni for most such seasons. The 1986 season is the first with more than three players, and between that and 2011, there were only four season with as many as four players.
This year’s list include Giancarlo Stanton, Salvador Perez, Tyrone Taylor, Cal Raleigh, and Jack Suwinski. Perez made the list multiple times.
Tolerating this type of offense may be a reaction to pitchers becoming tougher to hit due to high strike out rates. If hits are rare, it’s better if they are long distance hits, since they tend to do more damage.
Mike Trout of the Angels goes 0 for 3 with a walk in a 3-1 Guardians win, ending Trout’s home run streak at seven. He ends one short of the MLB record.
Hitting home runs in two consecutive games is actually pretty good. The best home run hitters might hit one every twelve plate appearances. Given five PA in a game, the probability of a home run would be about 0.35, there would only be a 12% chance of hitting home runs in consecutive games. Trout is an amazing hitter, so doing something as unlikely as homering in seven straight games is just another notch in his Hall of Fame belt.
Mike Trout of the Angels homered in the fifth inning to extend his home run streak to seven games. That’s one short of the record held by Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey, Jr. That will make Tuesday’s game a must-watch event.
Bo Bichette goes deep three times in the night-cap of the Blue Jays doubleheader against the Orioles. Bichette drove in five runs in the 8-4 victory, leading to a sweep of Baltimore. He goes three for five in game one for a six for ten on the day.
Bichette is having a bit of an off year, as his batting average and OBP is lower than one would expect for a player approaching his prime years. Maybe this is a sign of a good stretch drive to make those numbers look better.
Baltimore came into the day 2 1/2 games behind Toronto for the third wild card slot in the AL. The two losses put them 4 1/2 back, and made a playoff appearance a lot less likely. The Orioles put on a good run, but they need to make up five losses with three very good teams in front of them.
Matt Chapman of the Blue Jays continued his hot hitting on Sunday, going two for three with a home run in a 4-1 win over the Tigers. Since July 14, Chapman posted a .444 BA with seven home runs and 16 RBI in thirteen games. That’s good for a .978 slugging percentage.
More importantly, the Blue Jays are 10-3 in those games to take control of the AL Wild Card race.
Aaron Judge of the Yankees continued his assault on Roger Maris‘s single season American League home run record as he hits homer 42 in an 8-2 win over the Royals. Judge also reached a milestone as that was his 200th career home run:
Aaron Judge became the second-fastest player in major league history to reach 200 career home runs, and the New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals 8-2 on Saturday.
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The 6-foot-7 slugger’s 200th homer came in his 671st career game, behind just Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard, who achieved the feat in 2009 in 658 games.
Chron.com
Howard and Judge both reached the big leagues at seasonal age 24, putting them in the majors fully formed, a year away from their primes. They have little chance of putting up big career numbers, since the late start means they would spend most of their careers in their declining years.
Judge raised his probability of hitting at least 62 home runs 0.097, pretty close to a one in ten chance. He is on a pace for 67 home runs, with his most likely total 57. Note that the intrinsic probability of a home run in a plate appearance, 0.057, may be in need of an update. His HR/PA for the season stands at 0.096. I’ll stay conservative for a while, as this record proved very hard to break outside of the steroid era. Upping that parameter to 0.068, a reasonable regression of the data, move the probability to 0.29. So the probability likely lies somewhere between 10 and 30%.
I just saw a slow motion replay of Giancarlo Stanton’s swing on his home run, and he is looking right at the ball as he hits it. One might think the eye would waver a little, but I’m always impressed by the ability of the batter to watch the ball to the point of contact.
Exploring Baseball Data With R builds a model of home runs based on 2021 data to show how many fewer home runs are being hit in 2022.
What is interesting is that many of the current home run sluggers such as Judge, Trout, Schwarber and Ohtani have really been hurt by the deadened 2022 ball. Ohani’s residual, for example, is -9 which means that his 2022 home run total is 9 less than the predicted total using the 2021 ball model and his 2022 launch variables. Judge, Trout, Schwarber and Freeman would all be predicted to have higher 2022 home run counts if they were hitting balls with the carry characteristics of the 2021 ball.
BaseballWithR.WordPress.com
The probability of Judge hitting at least 62 home runs currently stands at 0.0035. With four more home runs, the probability would be 0.033, or about ten times higher.
Kyle Schwarber of the home Phillies owns two home runs Wednesday evening as Philadelphia leads Washington 2-1 in the top of the seventh inning. That’s his third multi-home run game in 25 against the Nationals. He also completed the feat on Tuesday. In addition, he produced five multi-home run games in 72 games for the Nationals. So eight of his nineteen multi-home run games involved Washington. He produced eight for the Cubs, but none against the Cubs.
MLB Daily Dingers breaks down the top home run seasons leading into the All-Star break. What stands out to me looking at the list and the write ups is how the great majority of these players faded in the second half. It’s not that they didn’t wind up with a high total of home runs, it was that most came no where near a record.
In addition, lowering the mound in 1969 led to a first half boom in home runs, and that neither Reggie Jackson nor Harmon Killebrew capitalized on that indicates the pitchers adjusted in the second half. It’s also clear that if there had not been a work stoppage in 1994, that might have been the season Roger Maris‘s record fell, not 1998.
Aaron Judge of the Yankees hits a three-run homer in the bottom of the tenth inning to beat the Astros 6-3 No-hit through six innings, home runs by Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu tied the game. Judge came up after a sacrifice, IBB and a strikeout put men on first and third with two out.
Judge is back on a pace for 62 home runs, with a probability of 0.0068 of hitting at least 62 dingers. His most likely total is now 50 HR.
The Brewers lead the Blue Jays 8-3 in the third inning. Toronto scored their three runs on a home run by Alejandro Kirk, 265 lb., while four of the Brewers runs came on two home runs by former Jay Rowdy Tellez, 255 lb. Rowdy does have six innings on Kirk.
Nick Fortes of the Marlins lives up to his name as he hits a two-out solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Mets 3-2. Fortes now owns 69 at at bats in the majors, and seven of his 20 hits have gone for home runs. That gives him a career .594 slugging percentage.
The Twins just hit their fifth home run of the game in 2 1/3 innings against Yankees starter Gerrit Cole. Cole came into the game with six home runs allowed in 64 2/3 innings. Byron Buxton hit two of the dingers, giving him fifteen on the season. The Twins lead the Yankees 7-3 in the bottom of the third inning. Cole is out of the game.
Kyle Garlick hit two home runs Friday night. With six home runs in sixty at bats this season, announcers are working on a home run call for the Twins slugger:
Trevor Story hit his ninth home run of the season, all coming in his last 14 games. Note that the link will update tomorrow morning. Story is not the only player on a power surge, and while he’s hit the most home runs since May 11th, hit fellow big sluggers in that time are putting up gaudier slugging percentages. Mookie Betts, coming into tonight, hit seven home runs and seven doubles in that time frame, while Story added just one double. Story’s teammate, Rafael Devers, hit five home runs so far in that time, and added two doubles already Thursday night for eight in that time frame.
The Red Sox lead the White Sox 6-0 in the bottom of the second, so we’ll see how much those two add to their totals.
Josh Rojas of the Diamondbacks became the fourth player this season and the second in two days to post a three-home run game. Rojas went three for five and drove in four runs as Arizona takes the game 10-6. There were eleven home runs in the game seven home runs in the game, all by the Diamondbacks, seven by the Diamondbacks, so I assume the wind was blowing out.
Rojas is not much of a home run hitter, coming into the game with thirteen home runs in 723 MLB at bats, and no extra base hits this season. His career slugging percentage was .364. This may go down as his most memorable game.
Ronald Acuna, Jr. of the Braves just hit his first home run of his season to cut the Brewers lead to 2-1. He hit it so hard, he knew it was gone, but in watching it, he was leaning over the plate, and suddenly he fell over! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
The Diamondbacks and Cardinals combine for six home runs as St. Louis takes the game 7-5. It’s the tenth game this season with six or more home runs. No one seems to have told this group that home runs are down this year. Only one other game today had as many as four so far.
Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. of the Blue Jays is having a blast a Yankee Stadium. He just hit his third home run of the game in the top of the eighth inning to help Toronto to a 6-3 lead over the Yankees. His third shot broke a 3-3 tie. Just for extra measure, his other at bat ended in a double. He’s now slugging .957 on the season. He now has 52 home runs in his last 167 games.
Big Bad Baseball notes that the difference between the home runs hit by the Braves and Astros tied a record.
Kyle Schwarber last played a game on July 2, 2021, and is still in second place in home runs. Since he now plays for the Red Sox, he won’t be adding to his NL total. Fernando Tatis Jr.managed to extend his lead in the race from 26 HR to 31 HR, but hasn’t played since July 30th. Ronald Acuna Jr.reached third place when he went down on July 10th, and just fell off the leaderboard today. I don’t know who will end up leading the NL in home runs, but it looks like the leader will have an historically low total, at least for the home run era.