It’s no secret that scoring sells in baseball. Over the past decade or so, run production has rapidly decreased in the MLB, which makes sense considering the league’s response to the steroid epidemic. Far fewer players were hitting the needle, and in turn, balls were staying in the park at a much higher rate.
Much to the surprise of baseball fans around the country, baseball’s scoring problem has actually taken a turn for the better in recent seasons--highlighted by Steroid Era-level production in 2017. Last season, Major League ballplayers hit an unbelievable 6,105 home runs in 4,860 games. That number is meaningless on it’s own, so let me put that in perspective: Just three seasons prior to this remarkable feat, there were only 4,186 home runs in the majors. The spike in long ball numbers has unsurprisingly sparked an enormous uptick in the production of runs over the past few seasons, which has risen back to that of the Steroid Era.
But why? Juicing is (allegedly) long gone, and pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Why, all of the sudden, are big leaguers hitting home runs at a rate we never thought we’d see again when ballplayers stopped using ‘roids?
The data:
The sudden, inexplicable spike in production has caused many diehard fans of the 150-year-old sport to raise an eyebrow, as they feel some sort of foul play may have been involved in order to save America’s pastime.
One off-the-wall theory: Billy Bean is an idiot
Who remembers that idiot? “Meeeeh, I can build a good baseball team with a bunch of garbage players, meeeeh!” I kinda hated Billy Bean. He always seemed like an arrogant prick, and then the movie Moneyball came out and just took everything to a whole new level. The guy traded Carlos Pena to keep Scott Hatteberg and somehow bragged about it. That was a bad freaking decision, Billy! Regardless, Bean’s ideological stronghold seems to have been broken. GMs are no longer looking beyond the numbers and analyzing players’ hearts; rather they’re taking into account more important things like, ya know, talent and production. I’ll never understand everyone’s obsession with Billy Bean. I’ll never understand why he turned the Red Sox down in 2002. I’ll never understand why he had a movie made about him. All I know is that I love Jonah Hill, and I’m so glad the moneyball era of Major League Baseball is over because it might just mean that offense is back.
Another Theory: The balls are juiced
This one is pretty wild… but how wild exactly? Earlier this month, Robinson Cano, a potential future Hall of Famer and seemingly perfect citizen of Major League Baseball, was popped for steroid use. Before this storyline shockingly unfolded, the mainstream theory on why offense was returning was that the MLB was simply turning a blind eye and slowly allowing the return of steroids back into the sport. Cano was the first star to get busted for steroids since Dee Gordon almost four years ago. You can read more about this not-so-out-there theory in Alex Hamel’s blog “MLB Baseballs are Juiced”.
Think what you want about the validity of this blog, but something is up. As you can see from our beautiful graph constructed by the graphic design team here at Third and Long, 2014 was the lowest run-producing year in the past 18 years of the sport. Since then, offense has steadily grown in the game, and we even hit an 18-year high in home runs last season, when major leaguers produced over 6,000 big flies. Interestingly, Rob Manfred took over as commissioner of the MLB the same year that the runs scored trend turned upwards. Behind closed doors at the Major League offices, there is some new policy in place to create more excitement in the game. What it is? I don't know. But please, keep it coming.
(Stats via Baseball-Reference)
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