The Royals have 1 home run in 2014 (and shouldn’t even have that many)

Hit Tracker Online is a home run database that not only shows you the actual flight path and distance of every homer, but it also details information such as how much a homer’s distance was helped or hurt by wind and temperature, as well as how many parks it would have gone out of in neutral conditions (meaning no wind and in 70 degree weather). It turns out Alex Gordon’s homer, the lone ball to clear a wall for the Royals this year, received 46 feet of distance from the wind that day: it still only traveled 355 feet even with that assist.

Hit Tracker’s verdict? Gordon’s homer would not have been such in any park in Major League Baseball had the wind not been there to make it so. It’s classified as a “Just Enough” and “Lucky” homer thanks to this, and was in essence a shallow fly ball that refused to come down:

So, if you like adjusting for environment and park, you can say, without being a liar, that the Royals have yet to hit a home run this season. Even if you won’t subscribe to that admittedly mean newsletter, the Royals still look foolish at the plate, as 102 players have already hit more than one homer this season. That’s 102 players with more home runs than the Royals as of April 15, 2014, more than two weeks into the season. Another 101 have as many homers as the Royals in that same time frame. Two of those 101 are pitchers, and unlike the Royals’ lone impostor long ball, Madison Bumgarner’s shot is labeled as gone in all 30. Gio Gonzalez’ shot is only considered a homer in four of them, but that’s four more stadiums than Gordon’s.

I almost I feel bad about taking the Royals’ only dinger away with science. I told you this was going to happen, though.