10 reasons 2019 was the Year of the Home Run

The defining trait of the 2019 MLB season has been the home run, with the long ball more prevalent today than at any other time in baseball history. There have been so many long ball records set this season that we decided to round up as many of them as possible, in one handy spot for you.

Good news for Jonathan Villar: the Orioles infielder is headed for the Hall of Fame. Well, his bat is anyway. Villar hit a home run on Sept. 11, the 6,106th of the season in major league baseball, one more than the 2017 record. We finished the year at 6,776 home runs, an absurd 671 over the previous mark.

There were 1.39 home runs hit per team game in 2019, a whopping 11 percent more than the previous record, and 20 percent more than any other season in major league history.

Major league hitters set a record for home runs in any calendar month in May, then broke that mark in June. They broke that record in August. In all, 2019 saw six of the top 10 calendar months for home runs in major league history. The balls were flying out of parks all year.

Even though the home run record for the league as a whole was obliterated, offense itself didn’t really explode in similar fashion. MLB averaged 4.85 runs per team game this season. That’s up from 2017 and 2018, but not at nearly the same rate as the home run explosion.

Major league teams scored 8.6 percent more runs per game than they did in 2018, but did so while hitting 21.4 percent more home runs per contest.

The season opened domestically earlier than it ever has, on March 28. The Dodgers sprung into action with eight home runs on opening day, two more than any other team has even hit in its first game of the season.

Five times a team hit eight home runs in a game in 2019. No other season had more than two games. But that’s not all:

The 1977 Red Sox held the record for most games with five or more home runs in a season, with eight. After four decades of the mark going unchallenged, three teams beat it in 2019 — the Twins had 11 such games, while the Yankees had 10 and the A’s had nine.

In 2018 the Yankees set a major league record with 267 home runs. This year, four teams broke that mark, led by the Twins and Yankees each topping 300.

In all, half the teams in the entire league set franchise records for home runs in 2019, led by the Twins beating their previous team mark by 36 percent.

An unfathomable 24 teams hit 200 home runs. In nearly the entire first century of baseball’s modern era, from 1901-95, a total of 23 teams hit 200 homers.

The Orioles in 2019 allowed 305 home runs, beating the old record (2016 Reds) by a whopping 18 percent. Also beating the old record for home runs allowed this year were the Rockies (270), Angels (267), and Mariners (260). The Phillies merely tied the old record.

Not surprisingly, the Yankees and Orioles proved a combustible matchup. New York won 17 of 19 games against Baltimore, and hit a record 61 home runs versus the Orioles this year, blasting the old standard of 48, a mark set by the 1956 Yankees against the A’s in 22 games.

The Bronx Bombers blasted 74 home runs in August to set a major league record, an astonishing 27.5-percent higher than the old mark of 58. In all, major league teams hit 56+ home runs in four different calendar months in 2019 — the Twins did it twice, with 56 homers in May and 59 more in August — something that was only done six times in all of major league history before this year.

But perhaps the most amazing stat about all those Yankees home runs is that Giancarlo Stanton — whose 305 home runs in his first nine seasons were tied for the most in baseball during that span — hit only three in 2019.

The Twins won their first American League Central title in nine years thanks to an absurdly powerful lineup that hit 307 home runs. That included 44 home runs from the catching position for Minnesota — 30 by Mitch Garver, 13 by Jason Castro, and one from Willians Astudillo.

That beat the old record of 43, held by four other teams — the Dodgers in 1953 and 1997, the Mets in 1999, and the Braves in 2003.

Minnesota also got 52 home runs from their designated hitters (41 by Nelson Cruz at that position), beating the record 50 hit by the David Ortiz-led Red Sox in 2006.

Reds third basemen hit a record 53 home runs in 2019, including 49 by Eugenio Suarez. The old record was 52.

Before this year, 12 teams boasted four players with 30 or more home runs, last done by the 2009 Phillies. This year, the Twins took it to the next level, the first team ever to have five players do it. Nelson Cruz (41 homers), Max Kepler (36), Miguel Sano (34), Eddie Rosario (32), and Mitch Garver (31) became the first quintet of teammates with 30 bombs in the same year.

The Braves and Dodgers each had three players with 35 home runs, tying a record that has been done 17 times. It hadn’t happened since 2016.

The sheer volume of players reaching milestones was something.

58 players hit 30 or more home runs, beating the old record of 47 set in 2000.

There were 129 players who hit 20 or more homers, more than the old mark of 117 from 2017. MLB teams averaged just over four players with at least 20 home runs in 2019.

A stunning 273 players hit 10 or more home runs in 2019. The old mark was 242, set in 2017.

These are just the nice round numbers, but it goes deeper (get it?). There are 549 players who hit at least one home run in 2019, 13 more than last year’s record. Records were set this season for players who hit at least two home runs, at least three home runs, and for every number through 35 home runs. It was a prolific year for long balls.

The proliferation of versatility and baseball’s top teams sporting unreal depth led to more players than ever hitting 10 or more home runs. The Yankees had a record 14 players reach double digits in home runs, including four — Gio Urshela, Edwin Encarnacion, Clint Frazier, Mike Ford, and Cameron Maybin — who weren’t even on the roster on opening day.

Before 2019, only one major league team had even 12 players with double-digit home run totals, and that was last year’s Yankees.

The Dodgers had 11 players with 10 or more home runs. Before this year, no National League team ever had more than 10 such players.

Aristides Aquino is a 25-year-old rookie with the Reds. He struck out in his only plate appearance in his 2018 cup of coffee, but mashed home runs almost like no other in his return trip to the bigs this year. Aquino set major league marks with eight home runs through his first 12 career games, with nine home runs through 14 games, 10 home runs through 16 games, 11 home runs through 17 games, 12 home runs through 22 games, 13 home runs through 27 games, and 14 home runs through his first 28 games.

You know, the time-honored home run records everybody talks about.

Those records, while impressive, lose a little luster when the person he passed was either Yordan Alvarez (this year), Rhys Hoskins (2017), or Trevor Story (2016). At some point, these records are more a product of their time than some amazing and rare individual accomplishment.

Similarly, we have the rookie home run records. Cody Bellinger in 2017 hit 39 home runs, breaking a National League rookie record that stood for 87 years. In the American League that year, Aaron Judge hit 52 home runs for the major league rookie record, breaking a 30-year-old mark.

Each of those records stood for all of two years with Mets first baseman Pete Alonso mashing 53 long balls in his debut season.

The most impressive Alonso feat was that he led the majors in home runs. He’s just the third rookie to lead baseball in home runs — joining Tim Jordan, who hit all of 12 homers in 1906 for Brooklyn, and Mark McGwire, who hit 49 for the A’s in 1987 — and the first to lead MLB outright.

Just after the All-Star break a unique streak started. On July 15, eight different players had a multi-homer game, including Rays catcher Travis d’Arnaud hitting three. Beginning that day, and for every day through Anthony Rizzo, Freddie Freeman, and Bo Bichette each hitting two home runs on Aug. 20, there were 37 consecutive days with at least one player hitting more than one home run in a game.

There were 113 such games during the streak, an average of three per day. The most prolific day was Aug. 15 with nine multi-homer games, including four in the Astros-A’s game alone — Matt Olson, Carlos Correa, Matt Chapman, and Michael Brantley.

The old record was 20 consecutive days, set in 2016.

The Dodgers swept the Rockies from June 21-23 at Dodger Stadium, and delivered the wins in the most dramatic fashion. Matt Beaty hit a walk-off home run to win Friday’s game, followed by Alex Verdugo doing the same on Saturday. When Will Smith followed suit with a walk-off home run of his own on Sunday, LA made history. This was the first time a team ever got three consecutive walk-off home runs from rookies. It was never done even twice in a row before 2019.

There have been numerous studies on the changes to the baseball this year, with Dr. Meredith Wills at The Athletic noting the lower seams, smoother leather, and rounder baseball contributing to the ball flying farther. Rob Arthur of Baseball Prospectus similarly noted how the baseball is more aerodynamic in 2019.

“The only thing I’m prepared to say at this point and time is I do think that we need to see if we can make some changes that gives us a more predictable, consistent performance from the baseball,” commissioner Rob Manfred told Forbes last week.

All those changes have fueled the spike in home runs this year, and also made for an interesting first season for Triple-A to use baseballs with the same specifications as major league baseballs. The result was a power explosion in both the International League and Pacific League, with a 57-percent increase in home runs across Triple-A.

2019 really was the year of the home run.