Home-run surge going, going gone?
Drop in fly balls that clear the fence may be due to a cold April
Within the existential crisis confronting Major League Baseball over the way the game is played, there was always one saving grace. If games were going to feature more pitches, more strikeouts, more walks, more pitching changes, and more all-or-nothing swings than at any time in the game’s history — all of that could be tolerated by fans as long as there were tons of home runs.
But what if all the other time- and action-sucking trends held true and home runs started to decline? That’s where baseball is in April 2018. And just as with a slumping slugger or a struggling pitcher, while it may be too early to panic, it isn’t too early to wonder whether there’s a problem.
Through the first 3 1⁄2 weeks of the season, strikeout and walk rates increased over March/ April 2017 — with strikeouts accounting for 21.6 per cent of all plate appearances last year and 23.0 per cent this year (through Thursday), and walks increasing from 8.7 per cent to 9.2. That puts the game on a pace to set a record for strikeouts for a 12th consecutive year and produce an 18-year high for walks. No surprises there.
But the home-run rate is down from 3.1 per cent of all plate appearances in March/ April 2017 to 2.8 per cent in 2018. Over a full season, that comes out to nearly 600 fewer homers than last year’s alltime-high of 6,105.
Batters are still hitting fly balls at the same rate as a year ago — 35.6 per cent of all batted balls — but the percentage of those fly balls turning into home runs has dropped by a full point, from 12.8 per cent to 11.8.
There are, of course, extenuating circumstances, namely the unusually inclement weather across the eastern half of the continent this month, which has led to a near-record total of postponements. Fly balls typically leave the park more frequently as the weather heats up.
But various scientific and journalistic studies last year — as well as the anecdotal evidence provided by Justin Verlander and others — found that changes to the composition of the baseball itself were responsible, at least in part, for the surge in home runs. And given this season’s drop, speculation has already begun that another change to the ball has swung the pendulum back in the other direction.
This season, MLB mandated that all teams store their baseballs in air-conditioned rooms.
Alan Nathan of the University of Illinois, a leading expert on the physics of baseball, is among those who caution against jumping to any conclusions, about either home-run rates or the composition of the baseball, at this early date.
This year’s decline in homers “might be due to the unusually cold weather,” Nathan said in an email. He added, “I am generally skeptical of claims that the ball has changed, whether ‘juiced’ or ‘unjuiced.’ ”