Revisiting the solo home run exhibition

Translated by Fernando Battaglini

In 2018, I wrote an article based on a comment from a subscriber. I researched home run percentage with no one on base. I found that the frequency was increasing, but not much more than the home run frequency in general. The most interesting conclusion, I think, is this:

On the other hand, if you see 100 games today compared to 100 in 2007, you’ll see a grand slam plus, one more three-run home run and 11 two-run home runs to go along with the additional 34 solo home runs.

I must confess: I’m not a big fan of solo home runs. Sure, they can be dramatic, but I find a multi-hit rally to be more aesthetically pleasing. I like multi-run home runs. But a progression of solo home runs seems like a kind of Neanderthal baseball to me.

So, I was wondering, how often were there games (excluding shutouts) in which all runs were scored on solo home runs? That seems boring and not fun to me. To use a bridge analogy, it’s like having four aces and a doubleton and calling it a starting count. (I promise never to use another bridge analogy.) A 3-1 game in which every run was scored by a home run may feature only four hits! Boring and not much fun.

And, fortunately, rare.

This graph normalizes games, with all runs scored on solo home runs for a 30-team, 162-game season. As you can see, the high point was just nine such games in 2015 and 2016. There have been, as of Sunday, three such games this year. Yes, the trend line is up. But if we’re talking about something that happens maybe once a month, it’s infrequent enough that I stop worrying about it.

Here are the solo home run game scores in the divisional play era:

That is all. There have been just 146 occurrences, and 71% have been 2-1 games. More than 10% have ended in a tie. That only 5-3 game was June 20, 2016, Rockies at Marlins. Marcell Ozuna and Giancarlo Stanton homered for Miami in the bottom of the first inning. Trevor Story, Mark Reynolds and Nick Hundley gave the Rockies a 3-2 lead in the top of the second inning with solo home runs. Ozuna tied at three to open the fourth. Reynolds hit his second of the day in the top of the sixth, Rockies 4-3. Charlie Blackmon added a walk-off home run in the top of the ninth to secure the win. The game also featured two doubles, nine singles, seven walks, one hit batter and one player walked on error, but the only counts came on solo throws. Neanderthal baseball.

But this research led me to another question: How often do teams score all of their runs with solo home runs? I’ve illustrated that both teams doing it is relatively rare. But what if it’s just one of them?

Here, the record is more interesting.

Let’s drill down to the 30-team era.

OK, that’s a trend. The three seasons with the most teams scoring runs, all with solo home runs, were 2016 (310), 2017 (293) and 2018 (282). But here are the top seven, spanning the entire history of baseball since 1901:

*Until July 24

The seven seasons with the most teams scoring all of their runs on solo home runs in history are the most recent seven seasons. (And 2015 was a career game in solo home runs before topping 1963 for eighth place.)

Games in which both teams score all of their runs with solo home runs have increased, but are still fairly rare. The total is not alarming. But the frequency of one team or another scoring all of their runs with home runs and empty bases has increased from about once every 24.0 games at the start of the 30-team era to as high as once every 15.7 games in 2016 and, so far this season, once every 18.5 games.

The Tigers beat the Astros 2-1 on August 21, 2019. Ronny Rodriguez hit a walk-off home run in the fifth inning. John Hicks did the same leading off the ninth. They were the only Tigers to reach base. Good victory for a Detroit team that had a balance of 47-114. But is this good for sport?

Watch nine baseball games this season and you’ll see, on average, that a club scores all of its runs with solo home runs. It may not be Neanderthal baseball, it may not deserve bad analogies to bridge, but it’s not exactly exciting either.

Thanks to Tom Gieryn for his research assistance. Thanks to Robert Au for working with me on the idea for this article.