The conclusion was pretty much exactly what youd expect: A bouncier ball with more drag did reduce home runs, particularly among softer-hit balls at lower launch angles. Compete with friends. 2004-2023 CBS Interactive. But this ball, at least, is coming from a single manufacturing batch, according to the league. While 500-foot blasts are a rarity in the regular season with only two being hit in all of baseball since opening day in 2015, hes already expecting several to be hit during the 2021 MLB Home Run Derby at Coors Field. And if a team was stupid enough to leave one entire half of the infield wide open for you? For the years Nathan tracked the change, 25% fewer home runs were hit at Coors Field after the humidor was installed. When teams averaged 4.83 runs per game in 2019, it represented the high point in offensive efficiency since 2006. It was a high and far home run. Welcome to the third edition of theScore's MLB Power Rankings for the 2023 season. In this Derby, 475 feet was the magic number, with any homer that long in regulation unlocking the full-minute bonus time. How far could a home run fly at 2021 MLB Home, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Colorado House plans revival of Polis gutted zoning reform bill. Ohtani blasted six homers of 500 feet or longer (including his last two dingers of the night, a pair of moonshots at 503 and 505 feet) to set a new single-Derby record. Thomas Harrigan, Sarah Langs, Matt Kelly, Manny Randhawa, Andrew Simon, Jason Catania, Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru, Brian Murphy and Michael Guzman. Said another way, I would this list is pretty much that same as "average wall distance in home stadium." Not unexpectedly, the Rockies play in one of the biggest stadiums, and the Yankees in one of the smallest. It is something that happens to almost every team once a week. I dont have any explanation why Cd might be higher in 2022, Nathan said when contacted about his paper. But if drag is indeed higher on the ball this year, then maybe much of what we are seeing could be due to a change in balls. Heres a reason for worry in 2021: Strikeouts are at an all-time high of 8.86 per team per game, while they were at a mere 5.89 in 1968. ESPN Sport Science obtained a sample of baseballs used from 2014-15 and another of balls used from 2016-17 and, with an assist from the USC School of Medicine, ran them through a CT scan. Over the winter, balls are stored in a humidity and temperature-controlled environment at the Rawlings distribution facility in Washington, Mo., league sources say. Or, if they only need a base hit to win, or a sacrifice fly or slow ground ball. Is two weeks actually enough? https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast . Round-by-round breakdown of an epic Derby. Brace for the numbers, there are plenty of them. I agree that personnel changes are a tough confounder for park analysis to overcome. With the humidor off and the temperature hot at Coors Field, it seemed nearly certain that this Derby would set some records. When the baseballs finally stopped flying, more than 300 dingers had been hit, and Pete Alonso had earned his second consecutive Derby title. In 2021, the average is 4.47, more than a run higher than 1968. Of course, Major League stadiums have different climates, dimensions, wind currents and elevations, which affect the distance batted balls travel. And the two-ball controversy last season, along with the length of time necessary to test and implement a new ball, likely means the league will not make an adjustment with the ball or humidor in the middle of the season. Just another example of how analytics is destroying the sport for many many fans. Why would a humidor make the ball less bouncy when most of the remaining parks that added them were in humid spots meaning the humidor would dry out the ball, on average, and make it more bouncy? But if the current patterns hold and if the league eventually perceives them to be a problem rather than the desired outcome the commissioners office probably cannot act until next offseason. The table is sorted by raw percentage difference, but the statistical tests incorporate sample size, which is why certain rows may have smaller differences but are still significant at a more extreme alpha level: Whats interesting to note here is that 25 of the 28 parks listed experienced some level of decrease in home run rate, which aligns with the broader trend that I broke down about last month. Devin Booker sulked. and too often in 2-1 games or 1-0 games, it is not pitchers painting the black and keeping the batters off balance. Tampa Bay Rays Record Last 10 . The deadened ball now fully adopted by the league is reducing the balls bounciness as well. Printed from TeamRankings.com - 2005-2023 Team Rankings, LLC. experiences wear and tear, for lack of a better term. Barrels are coming up two feet short in stadiums that had a humidor last season, so its not all humidor. Yes, the Derby (especially one at Coors Field) is a different beast than a real MLB game, but its not like Alonso hasnt shown plenty of power in those situations, too. This is a fascinating thing but I do think you would need to take into account the getting better pitchers / getting worse hitters aspect of this in a more direct way. The official source for player and team stats, MiLB home run leaders, league, batting average, OPS and stat leaders Jim Passon (@PassonJim) July 19, 2022. All Rights Reserved. All 19 other parks with new humidors used to follow their own individual protocols for storing the ball, known to those teams and MLB leadership, and those differences are relevant to how the humidor will affect their batted balls this season. Every time a baseball warms up and cools down, its physical properties change. Odrisamer Despaigne (3) MLB chose to set the humidor to one setting 70 degrees and 57 percent relative humidity across all parks except Coors Field, which uses 65 percent relative humidity. Changes to the baseball itself are the most straightforward explanation, though it should be noted they're not the only possible explanation. Shohei Ohtani also equaled Judge at 513. MLB Home Run Rates by Year* 2018: 4.5% . During the Home Run Derby, there will probably be a number of shots over 500 feet, certainly many close to 500 feet is my guess, Nathan said. Ohtanis longest blast was a 110 mph shot that traveled a projected 513 feet, which tied Judges previous Statcast record-holder from 2017. The strikeout rate, by contrast, is rocking around at record levels. Even then, batters produced a .252 average. If you keep the dew point constant, temperature fluctuations become less of a problem, since the ambient moisture in the air stays the same.. The state of offense worried the lords of baseball in 1968, as it does now. There was nothing said about the drag on the ball in that memo about the new ball. A Barrel is a Statcast-defined batted ball in play that is hit at the right angles and with the right exit velocities to produce power. If you take that as an upper limit and you add a 30-degree launch angle, you come up with something around 500 feet. Visual contact quality that chased outfielders back toward the warning track the last few years is now resulting in outs caught by stationary fielders. Manny Banuelos (8), Carlos Rodon (9) If we combine 2014 home run rates with 2022 strikeout rates, we get the current .232 April batting average, which is worse than the mid-.240s weve grown accustomed to seeing. Yet, the effects might be reversed as the more humid months come and the humidor instead dries up the balls. Simply put, Harper hits it hard and hits it far. In a short paper he posted to Twitter last week, Nathan also found that the drag (Cd) on the ball once atmospheric conditions were taken into account is higher this year than last year. Nathan, who was a member of the Home Run Committee that was commissioned in 2019 to understand why the ball was flying over the fence, wasnt sure this was the best choice. In general, there is no more than a small difference between a given home run's calculated and Statcast distances. Even in the event he doesnt go on one of his signature runs, the Yankees still have nine games left to play against the Orioles -- considering their shared track record, Stantons one to keep an eye on.-- Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru, 4) Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue JaysLongest HR in 2021: 465 feet (May 16)Longest HR since 2015: 465 feet (May 16, 2021), No matter what stat you want to use -- barrel rate, hard-hit rate, maximum or average exit velocity, etc. (The r-squared between launch angle difference and home run rates was just 0.01.) Sammy Sosa still holds the longest estimated homer distance at any Derby with his 524-foot blast at the 2002 edition at Milwaukees American Family Field. They would shorten up their swing with 2 strikes, just trying to make contact. Eleven of his 32 homers have traveled at least 430 feet; only Ohtani (12) has done that more often in 2021. This year, these well-struck balls are more frequently coming up short, and settling into outfielders' gloves. The humidor has the most impact in extreme climates like swampy Florida (even in a dome) or the Arizona desert, but it can make some amount of difference everywhere. As the Rockies and D-backs (who have 17 combined games remaining against Tatis Padres) drop further out of contention and pitcher fatigue builds, look for Tatis to start feasting.-- Matt Kelly, 2) Shohei Ohtani, AngelsLongest HR in 2021: 470 feet (June 8)Longest HR since 2015: 470 feet (June 8, 2021), Its the Year of Ohtani. How far did the farthest home run in Major League Baseball history fly? Ohtani, a two-way sensation, entered as the Derbys biggest headliner, and though he lost to Soto in a pair of first-round swing-offs, he did make some history by blasting an incredible 15 homers of 475 feet or longer. Here are the home runs per ball in play numbers: The home run rate in the 10 parks that used the humidor in 2021 is down 0.7 percentage points. Among fly balls hit at or above 95 mph, below 110 mph, and at a launch angle of less than 30 degrees during games played on or before May 31 in each year. Picking a 6-foot-7 behemoth All-Star slugger with a track record for hitting gargantuan home runs? One fact that sticks out in any ball-centered explanation is that MLB, according to its own memo, intended to change the bounciness of the ball they wanted to center the ball with the specification range for COR and CCOR, and the Coefficient of Restitution is a fancier way of saying bounciness. 550 feet? Mancinis 59 total homers are the fifth most by any player in any Derby. Not only is the MLB batting average down 11 points from its historic 2020 lows, but the .311 on base average is also off 11 points, and the .391 slugging average is down 27 percentage points. Michael Kopech (3) Six feet is the difference between Bellinger's rocket being a home run and an out. I did attempt to examine the impacts, if any, of these exit velocity changes on home run rates, and there was a moderate correlation (r-squared of 0.28) that is important to keep in mind. In 1968, Sam McDowell led MLB with 9.5 strikeouts per nine innings. back down to 1980s levels if the current trends hold, just as they were coming off the shortened spring in 2020, who used production codes to show the distinction, meaning the humidor would dry out the ball. Bellinger's drive looked gone off the bat because the last few seasons have conditioned us to expect balls hit like that to carry over the wall for a home run. The exit velocity keeps going up (because batters are hitting the ball harder with each passing the year the same way pitchers keep throwing harder) and the launch angle has held steady, yet the average distance on barrels has dropped six feet this year. But its not just the baseball that is contributing here. (The longest in-game homer is 505 feet). Coors Fields altitude will increase those numbers thanks to its thinner air creating less drag on the ball. Communication. But there are a few stadiums that are harder to explain. Only Giancarlo Stanton has more, with eight. Left On Base per Game. The humidor and ball may also be reducing offense by the way they interact, increasing drag by increasing the seam height. And that ball, the league says, is the only one in circulation this season. Cookie Notice In 2021, there are more fly balls in play compared to 2019, many of which were ultimately caught for an out (indicated in magenta): Similar trends can be observed for other ballparks as well. But rosters will be reduced from 28 to 26 on May 2, and teams, for the first time, will be restricted to carrying a set number of pitchers: 14, with that number further trimmed to 13 as of May 30, MLB announced Tuesday. A stiff wind of just 20 mph could add as much as 80 feet to a shot, which is how Nathan explains Mickey Mantles 565-foot home run at Washington, D.C.s Griffith Stadium in 1953. Not counting openers and ranked by WAR, the White Sox rotation in 2019 (starts): Lucas Giolito (29) Id prefer to see a few more weeks of data before speculating about that.. Projected Home Run Distance represents the distance a home run ball would travel if unhindered by obstructions such as stadium seats or walls. Alan Nathan, a physics professor who has advised MLB in the past, corrected for weather by comparing the months of April across that period by batted ball quality, and came up with similar findings. T-Mobile Home Run Derby: Complete coverage, Round-by-round breakdown of an epic Derby, longest estimated homer distance at any Derby. (On the other hand, hitters could earn a full minute of bonus time, instead of 30 seconds). Lucas Giolito (11) Statcast Home Run Tracker No Doubters: Out at All 30 Stadiums, Mostly Gone: Out at 8 to 29 Stadiums, Doubters: Out at 7 Stadiums or Fewer xHR: Ballparks Gone At/30 * Environmental variables (elevation/weather/wind/etc.) Its entirely possible that, between 2019 and 21, a team added home run hitters to its lineup or acquired home run-adverse pitchers for its staff, or the opposite could also be true. Hector Santiago (2) So what happened? The data doesnt provide an explanation, but given the trends, its fair to look at the changes in approaches to offense that have mirrored the decline. Judge hit four total 500-footers in the 17 event. Devan Fink is a Contributor at FanGraphs. The yarn should expand more into areas that push back less, raising the seams. Although he was eliminated in the first round, Salvador Perezs 28 home runs are now tied with Ohtani (2021) and Josh Hamilton (2008) for the fourth-highest first-round total in Derby history. Alonso is the fourth player to win multiple Home Run Derby titles, joining Ken Griffey Jr. (three times), Yoenis Cspedes (twice) and Prince Fielder (twice). For 79.8% of home runs, the difference is less than one foot. 6:31 pm ET. In 2014, MLB teams averaged 0.86 home runs per game, but in 2015 that figure vaulted to 1.01 per team, per game. A team striking out 15 times in a game is not a rare occasion when they ran up against great pitching. For more information, please see our Only 1908 was lower at 3.38. "Then it looked like it hit a wall. Just to signify it, and thats how they could measure it.. 4.9. In terms of total homer distance in a single round, that is the third-highest total in any Derby under Statcast tracking since 2016, trailing only Guerrero (16,925 feet) and Pedersons (16,911 feet) totals from their epic 19 semifinal. This is best shown with barrels. But theres plenty of season left for more moonblasts. Dr. Willis' findings didn't exactly align with those of the MLB-assembled panel while at the same time reinforcing the fact that the ball changed prior to the 2019 season. Nathan has used his expertise and interests to bring new understanding to the sport. Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. Since the advent of Statcast, no one has more home runs of 450 feet or more. In fact, drag was something that the league conspicuously didnt test before rolling out that version of the ball in 2021. If you add back moisture say, in a humidor the ball will expand again, but theres no guarantee the yarn layers will do so symmetrically., Theres a gap in the covers along the seams, meaning theres not as much pressure, Wills added. Could there also be a weather issue of comparing a full season to a partial one? Compare your races against other runners the same age. Mancini certainly enjoyed the Derby atmosphere at Coors Field. In those four previous Statcast-tracked Derbies, there had been a total of four balls hit 500-plus feet, all by Judge. And it did. Derek Carty, creator of THE BAT projections, includes weather as well as batted ball dimensions like launch angle and exit velocity in his model. Perhaps prompted by an outcry among pitchers,. About one-fifth of the way through the 2021 MLB season, one trend in scoring is becoming clear: Almost nobody can hit. It gets the edge by a single foot over the 118.6 mph, 495-foot home run Judge crushed that June off the Orioles' Logan Verrett. A key factor many overlook when talking about altitude is that Denver can often have strong breezes on summer afternoons. If we say the 0.7 percentage point decline is a result of the ball being changed, then the other 0.9 percentage points are the result of the humidor. So they have one home run with an average of 400 feet. But perhaps more than understanding why were seeing such significant changes at the ballpark level, its first important to acknowledge that some huge differences exist in how the baseball (and potential humidor) is affecting how the ball flies in each environment. The committee made recommendations about the ball and its storage, the league followed most of them, and the home run rate essentially has returned to where it had been in the mid-2010s. The ball is the first place to look. This likely is at least part of the reason Oakland has the second-biggest downward turn in the distance on batted balls, losing a whopping 24 feet on barrels so far. During actual games, none of Mancinis 102 career homers have traveled further than 459 feet, per Statcast. So nope, the balls not flying as far right now. Then something happened between the latter weeks of the regular season and the start of the 2019 playoffs. First, here are the raw home run rates for these types of fly balls for each ballpark from 2019 to 21. ESPN Sport Science obtained a sample of baseballs used from 2014-15 and another of balls used from 2016-17 and, with an assist from the USC School of Medicine, ran them through a CT scan. MLB reportedly added humidors to five stadiums for the 2021 season, bringing the total league-wide to 10. "Gimme a break," Dodgers broadcaster Joe Davis said. The only problem is that adjustment can't be made overnight, and now a bunch of would-be homers are becoming fly outs, and offense is down around the league. The Statcast distances have a mean of 397 feet, a median of 398 feet, a minimum of 324 feet, and a maximum of 481 feet. All orgs will receive a full list. Pitchers arent any better. The pitch jumped off the 2019 NL MVP's bat at 102.3 mph and sailed toward center field and then it just died. Now, factor in the Coors Field altitude and I'm going with . The drag is up at the beginning of the season in each of the graphs of the drag coefficient above from Nathan. Over the past two seasons, the first of which was heavily abbreviated because of COVID, the ball was still pretty lively in terms of home run rates, albeit not quite to the extremes of the 2019 regular season. That seems impossible, but it happened. Eight of the 10 longest tracked Derby homers are now from 2021, as well as 12 of the top 15. In broad terms, the committee found that baseballs were experiencing less drag in the air, which allowed them to travel farther, but they couldn't pin down a reason for the change.