Where Have All the Home Runs Gone? It’s Too Early to Tell

One of many quite a few explanation why Mike Trout’s newest damage — a torn meniscus in his left knee, requiring surgical procedure that may sideline him for at the least 4 weeks and maybe longer — is such a bummer is that the three-time MVP and future Corridor of Famer was off to a fairly robust begin. Whereas his .220/.325/.541 slash line is nothing to write down house about inside the context of his profession — certainly, his 141 wRC+ can be his second-lowest mark, after final 12 months — he had hit 10 homers earlier than the top of April for simply the second time (2018 was the opposite). That complete was sufficient to share the key league lead with Gunnar Henderson, and it put him on tempo to problem his profession excessive of 45 homers, set in 2019. Even inside an offensive profile that’s present process some evolution as he ages, that’s spectacular.

That goes doubly provided that by the top of April, league-wide house run charges had been down greater than 15% relative to final season. The place in 2023 groups averaged 1.21 house runs per sport, by the top of April that they had averaged simply 1.02 homers per sport. Notice that we’re nonetheless early sufficient within the season {that a} single day’s slate of video games can bump that final decimal in a single course or one other; with 20 homers in 30 team-games on Could 1, the season-to-date common fell from 1.018 homers per sport to 1.007. All of which is to say that whereas the state of affairs deserves a more in-depth look — notably with league-wide scoring having decreased from final 12 months — this needs to be thought of a preliminary investigation.

If the house run charge from this March and April holds up — and hereafter, I’m going to lump all video games earlier than Could 1 into what we think about April, simply as we do in our splits — it could characterize the biggest year-to-year drop since 1987–88, when the per-game charge fell from 1.06 homers per sport to 0.76. In the event you’ve been following together with house run historical past, you realize that the 1987 season was an outlier that marked the primary time house run charges rose above 1.0 per sport. Whereas charges instantly fell again under that threshold and remained there by the subsequent half-decade, that season served as a preview of what was to return from 1994–2009, when house run charges had been above that threshold yearly, doubtless as a result of a confluence of things that ranged from enlargement and newer ballparks to the widespread use of performance-enhancing medication and modifications to the baseball itself.

Final 12 months’s per-game house run charge was the fifth highest of all time, however behind 4 different current seasons:

Primarily based upon the information by April 30, this 12 months’s charge can hardly be thought of an historic low, but when it held, it could rank as one of many 10 lowest of the Wild Card period:

It isn’t simply house runs which might be down, both. By means of the top of April, scoring was down a bit over 5% relative to final season as groups fell from plating 4.62 runs per sport to 4.38. Batting averages had dropped eight factors (from .248 to .240) and on-base percentages six factors (from .320 to .314). Slugging share plummeted 29 factors (from .414 to .385) — we haven’t seen the league-wide slugging share this low since 1992 — and with one other day of knowledge, it fell to .383. Perhaps commissioner Rob Manfred and his friends can give you some guidelines that may assist stimulate offense. Wait, they did that already? What the hell?

Earlier than we get too far into the weeds, it’s price remembering that April (and the top of March) options the best temperatures of the baseball season, when the ball doesn’t carry as far. Through Baseball Reference’s Stathead, final 12 months there have been 146 video games that started with temperatures of fifty levels Fahrenheit or decrease, and 133 of these occurred inside a staff’s first 30 video games of the season, which started on March 30. Thus it’s extra useful to check apples to apples, and Aprils to Aprils, and as soon as we do, we see that these house run charges persistently lag behind the full-season ones:

To protect the graph’s continuity, I included the “full” 2020 information for the 60-game season, however if you happen to ignore that time, you’ll be able to see that the current April house run charges are fairly predictive of full-season charges:

Relative to final April, house run charges fell 9.8%, a large drop however not the 15.6% slip we get by evaluating the primary month to the earlier full season, with its extra homer-conducive warm-weather months. Given the common hole between the April and full season charges over this era (0.097 homers per staff per sport) and the usual deviation (0.033 homers per sport), we must always anticipate this 12 months’s full charge to land within the 1.083–1.148 vary. At 1.116 homers per sport, the middle of that vary would characterize a 7.6% fall-off from final 12 months, with the extremes at 4.9% and 10.3%.

Something in that vary would characterize smaller year-to-year modifications than we’ve seen within the post-pandemic interval, however it’s nonetheless sufficient to benefit a more in-depth look. So what’s taking place? Variations in offensive ranges and strikeout charges can scale back the variety of batted balls and subsequently house runs, however even with what we noticed in April (decrease scoring but additionally a barely decrease strikeout charge), there have been truly extra fly balls per sport this April than final (6.65 vs. 6.57) — it’s simply that these fly balls haven’t traveled as far or carried out as a lot harm. Right here’s the comparability of this season to current full-season numbers:

Balls are being hit nearly as arduous as final 12 months, however they’re not going for singles, extra-base hits, or homers as typically. Actually, in the event that they held up for the remainder of the season, the batting common and slugging share on fly balls by April can be the bottom since 2016 (.224 AVG, .709 SLG). Once more, it makes extra sense to check solely the April segments:

With that comparability, we see that even on the similar common exit velocity, the common fly ball carried about two toes lower than the comparable time final 12 months, however one foot greater than in 2022, with the related charge stats — each precise and anticipated — nearer to the sooner season, which is to say that these fly balls had been much less productive.

This raises the query of whether or not the ball itself has modified, one thing we all know has occurred a number of instances in current seasons. Modifications involving the yarn, tablet, leather-based, and drying course of — which may change the seam top, leather-based smoothness, and bounciness of the ball — have been properly documented through the years regardless of Main League Baseball’s lack of transparency. The league’s buy of about 25% of Rawlings, the ball’s producer, appears to have accelerated the tempo of change. Typically, a number of makes of the ball have been used throughout the identical season, and fairly probably in the identical sport, given the anecdotes of pitchers reporting ball-to-ball variability. As documented by Insider’s Bradford William Davis, with analysis by Dr. Meredith Wills, apparently three completely different variations of the ball had been utilized in 2022.

Early final 12 months, when house run charges had been on the rise relative to 2022 — when Aaron Decide nonetheless broke the long-standing American League house run report with 62 — Rob Arthur reported that the balls’ drag coefficient — as estimated from Statcast pitch monitoring information based mostly on a technique developed by Alan Nathan and David Kagan — had decreased from 2022, portending a rise in house run charges. Per information now revealed at Baseball Savant’s Drag Dashboard, we will see that the drag coefficient did enhance considerably because the season went on:

The ultimate estimated imply drag coefficient (.3417) nonetheless wound up decrease than in 2022 (.3469); the .0052 lower was fairly shut in magnitude to the rise from ’21 to ’22 (.0058), however the change went within the different course. The rise to this point this season relative to 2023 is way smaller:

In line with that Savant dashboard, “As a basic rule of thumb, a lower within the drag coefficient of 0.01 will enhance the gap of a batted ball with an exit velocity of 100 mph by roughly 5 toes (and a rise of 0.01 will lower batted ball distance by 5 toes).” Except the change from 2019 to the shortened ’20 season, not one of the annual modifications rise to that threshold, and the present one is a full order of magnitude smaller. Primarily based on the reported information, the change in drag isn’t sufficient to account for what we’re seeing, notably given MLB’s notoriously free tolerances in its ball specs. Because the web page notes, “[W]hile drag fluctuates from 12 months to 12 months, these modifications are small relative to the ball-to-ball variation noticed inside a person season… Relative to this small distinction, the usual deviations of the drag coefficients are giant.”

Past drag, modifications within the ball’s coefficient of restitution and weight, as affected by the humidity degree, can even have an effect on the habits of the ball. In 2022, the usage of humidors turned necessary for all 30 groups, the place solely 10 used them the 12 months earlier than; these in any respect areas in addition to Coors Area are set to 70 levels and 57% relative humidity (it’s 62% at Coors). However as a result of humidity ranges differ all through the season, even with such controls, the COR will differ as properly.

Dr. Wills has begun accumulating 2024 baseballs to dissect, however for the second we don’t have sufficient proof to recommend that the ball has modified, and even when it had, that’s to not say such change is intentional. For as crucial as Dr. Wills has been of MLB’s lack of transparency lately, she acknowledged to FanGraphs, “These form of systematic variations appear to occur once they transfer from one manufacturing cycle to the subsequent. It’s the kind of factor you may anticipate with provide turnover and equipment refurbishment.” Past that, variations in temperature, humidity, wind, and different environmental components may very well be contributing to what nonetheless counts as a relatively small change in common fly ball distance, and likewise variable efficiency components corresponding to launch and spray angles.

All of that is yet one more reminder that we’re nonetheless early within the season. Latest historical past tells us that now we have sufficient information to know that we’ll wind up with a decrease league-wide house run charge this 12 months than final, albeit to not the acute we’ve seen to this point. And whereas our appreciation of the league’s house run charge could also be subjective (not everybody needs extra homers), it’s affordable to hope that Trout will return quickly sufficient to do his small half — and likewise, thumpers corresponding to Decide and Matt Olson, who’re off to gradual begins — in ensuring that it doesn’t drop any additional.