And 162 games later, the 2019 baseball season’s over. What happened? How’d your team do? How’d my team do? Who’s going to win the World Series? Let’s talk a bit about the 2019 baseball season.
Year of the Home Run
Teams hit a lot of home runs in 2019. No, I mean a lot of home runs in 2019. We haven’t seen the level of home runs in 2019 baseball since…pretty much ever. It’s an old game, and teams don’t break all-time records very often. Especially team records.
How rare? Well, let’s look at a few examples. For doubles, the 2008 Texas Rangers hold the all-time American League record and the 1930 St. Louis Cardinals hold the all-time National League record. For hits, the 1930 Philadelphia Phillies hold the National League record and the 1921 Detroit Tigers hold the American League record. And then there’s batting average. For that, the same 1921 Detroit Tigers hold the American League record and the 1894 Philadelphia Phillies hold the National League record.
The point is these records stick around awhile. Maybe 11 years, but maybe 89 or 98 years. And maybe 125 years. When teams break those records, it usually means the game’s changing in some way.
I think that’s where we are with home runs. The Minnesota Twins broke the all-time team home run record in 2019 with an incredible 307 homers. But the Twins aren’t the only team that broke the record during the 2019 baseball season. The New York Yankees broke it with 306. And the Housing Astros broke it with 288. Oh, and the Los Angeles Dodgers broke it with 279. The previous record was 268 homers, and the Yankees set that record in…2018. You have to go all the way down to 28th place (and 240 team homers) to get to a team home run record set before the steroid era.
Well, that’s interesting. Without intervention, this probably continues. Is it good or bad for the game?
Pace of Play and Other Trends?
At the beginning of the season, I wrote about certain fads involving the pace of play. What happened with that? Very little, as it turns out. In practice, the home run served as substitute for the sort of excitement a pitch clock allegedly delivers.
I think we did see one thing of note. That’s the continuation of the trend of using an opener on the mound to begin games. Why do teams do this? I see a couple of reasons. One, starting pitchers pitch fewer innings now. As a result, teams must adapt to the reality of using more pitchers more creatively to finish nine innings. Two, and much more cynically, managerial use of the opener potentially undermines the salary teams pay to starting pitchers. It does so by limiting stats accumulation and the centrality of the starter to the pitching staff.
All that merits watching.
New York Yankees
After 50 games, I was cautiously optimistic about the Yankees. And in the end, they did really well. I expected to see a close, three-team race between the Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees. But while the Rays hung around for a bit, the Sox faded and the Yankees blew both teams away.
The 103-59 season looks all the more great considering the Yankees set the all-time record for most players on the injured list. The freak injury to Dellin Betances, who I mentioned earlier, is just heartbreaking. Just about everyone who might have stepped up did so, and I think they’re in decent shape for the postseason.
Postseason
ESPN did a more in-depth postseason preview, and I’m not going to replicate their work. I’m mostly looking at the Yankees. And they’ve got a tough road to the World Series. They usually own the Twins, but the Twins played great ball this year. And if they get past the Twins, they probably face the Astros and then (probably) the Dodgers. As I said, they’ve got a tough road.
