I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when I see a big run game — like the Phillies 11-10 victory over Miami Saturday — is look to see who hit the home runs. I imagined Schwarbs hitting a couple, Harper popping one, maybe Nick Castellanos with a long fly ball …
Anyway, it turns out that nobody homered for the Phillies.
Eleven run without a homer isn’t unheard of in our time — it’s actually happened two other times this season, so far — but it’s pretty rare. Last year, teams scored 11-plus runs 204 times. Of those, only 11 teams did it with 0 homers.
That’s about 5% of the time.
I was curious how that compared to, say, 1986. I pick 1986 for a specific reason. Last year, teams averaged 4.39 runs per game. In 1986, they averaged 4.41 runs per game. So that’s roughly the same overall run environment.
Well, in 1986, teams scored 11-plus runs 159 times. And in how many of those 159 games did the team not homer? I
Twenty-three.
That’s about three times more often. I don’t think this will surprise anybody, but it’s just another reminder about how much the timeless game changes.
Joe’s Notebook is filled with web-only riffs. They will pop up whenever.
Reply