Are Baseballs "Juiced" This Season?

[DrungoHazewood]

In 1884 the Chicago Colts allowed 83 homers.  The second most was the Buffalo team at 46, and the average was 40.  Over double the average.

On the other side Chicago hit 142, the average was 40, and the second-most was 39.  They hit so many that the average was higher than the second place team's total.

It helped that Lakefront Park had several fences at or around 200', and in other years balls passing over those fences were ground rule doubles.

[DrungoHazewood]

1871 National Association.  League average was five, the Cleveland Forest Cities allowed 13.

19 and aught six the Red Sox allowed 37 in a league that averaged 17.

 

[Moose Milligan]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

In 1884 the Chicago Colts allowed 83 homers.  The second most was the Buffalo team at 46, and the average was 40.  Over double the average.

On the other side Chicago hit 142, the average was 40, and the second-most was 39.  They hit so many that the average was higher than the second place team's total.

It helped that Lakefront Park had several fences at or around 200', and in other years balls passing over those fences were ground rule doubles.

Baseball didn't count back then.  Didn't they have 4 bases before home base and run them clockwise?

[DrungoHazewood]

1 minute ago, Moose Milligan said:

Baseball didn't count back then.  Didn't they have 4 bases before home base and run them clockwise?

That's a dirty, scandalous rumor.  But home plate was square, and the pitchers were struggling with this numbskull idea of "overhand" pitching from a box 50-odd feet away.  The box was made of burlap and tar paper.  And we wore onions on our belt, that was the custom of the day.  

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's a dirty, scandalous rumor.  But home plate was square, and the pitchers were struggling with this numbskull idea of "overhand" pitching from a box 50-odd feet away.  The box was made of burlap and tar paper.  And we wore onions on our belt, that was the custom of the day.  

Glad you can take a good natured ribbing.  

Onions?  Are you sure?  Thought it was garlic.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Moose Milligan said:

Glad you can take a good natured ribbing.  

Onions?  Are you sure?  Thought it was garlic.

Drungo is so old he makes Simpsons references.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Drungo is so old he makes Simpsons references.

Yeah, count me out of being able to pick up on Simpsons references.  

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, count me out of being able to pick up on Simpsons references.  

And yet, Huey Lewis and you are all over it.

Strange world.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

And yet, Huey Lewis and you are all over it.

Strange world.

Never was huge into the Simpsons.  My dad has had Sports on in his car since 1985 until about two years ago.  That, Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" and  ZZ Top "Eliminator".  

Can't pick your family.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Moose Milligan said:

Never was huge into the Simpsons.  My dad has had Sports on in his car since 1985 until about two years ago.  That, Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" and  ZZ Top "Eliminator".  

Can't pick your family.

Father- Country

Mother- Rod Stewart and Bob Seager

Sister- Hair metal (to this day)

 

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Father- Country

Mother- Rod Stewart and Bob Seager

Sister- Hair metal (to this day)

 

Glad to see you've got superior taste to all of them.

[SurhoffRules]

1 hour ago, LookinUp said:

The data isn't perfectly stable, but for HR rate, Camden Yards typically ranks pretty high. Here are a few seasons.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/sort/HRFactor

Pulling in HRFactor from ESPN would be nice but would take some time so I adjusted off BBREF Pitcher Park Factor (>100 favors batters) and extended the dataset to 1959. The 2019 Os still rank ahead of all the other seasons in the range, though the 1982 Oakland team got a nice bump when you factor in they play in an enormous park. The 82 Phillies and 94 Braves managed to pull off really impressive seasons even with an unfriendly park.

Year	Tm	PPF	lgHR/G	HR/G	HR/G / lgHR/G	HR/G * PPF	HR/G * PPF / lgHR/G
2019	BAL	100	1.35	2.09	155%		2.09		155%
1982	MIN	104	0.80	1.28	160%		1.23		154%
1964	KCA	106	0.85	1.35	159%		1.27		150%
1982	OAK	94	0.80	1.09	136%		1.16		144%
1995	MIN	102	1.01	1.46	144%		1.43		141%
1963	DET	103	0.83	1.20	144%		1.17		140%
1983	DET	96	0.78	1.05	134%		1.09		139%
1992	CLE	99	0.72	0.98	136%		0.99		137%
1977	SEA	101	0.86	1.20	139%		1.19		137%
1978	SEA	101	0.70	0.97	138%		0.96		136%
....
1965	PIT	99	0.83	0.55	66%		0.55		67%
1996	ATL	102	1.09	0.74	68%		0.73		66%
1996	FLA	96	1.09	0.70	64%		0.73		66%
1971	HOU	97	0.73	0.46	63%		0.48		65%
1982	PHI	102	0.80	0.53	66%		0.52		65%
1982	LAD	97	0.80	0.50	62%		0.52		64%
1994	ATL	101	1.04	0.67	64%		0.66		64%
1980	HOU	91	0.73	0.42	58%		0.46		63%
1984	LAD	98	0.77	0.47	61%		0.48		62%
1981	HOU	94	0.64	0.36	56%		0.39		60%

 

[SurhoffRules]

6 minutes ago, SurhoffRules said:

The 82 Phillies and 94 Braves managed to pull off really impressive seasons even with an unfriendly park.

Going down this rabbit hole...Maddux tossed 4 HRs in 202 innings the strike shortened 94 season. Man he was a machine.

[SurhoffRules]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

I found one that was worse — the ‘68 Cubs allowed .85 homers per game in a year when the league average was .55 — 54.5% above league average.    Of course, that league average was incredibly low, in the Year of the Pitcher.    

I suspect if I kept looking I’d find other teams that were more than 51.4% above league average.    But I found one, so I’m stopping.  

This was bothering me because it wasn't showing up towards the top of my dataset. I see that you were judging NL teams vs the NL avg and so on. So other reader are aware, my numbers are using MLB averages. In 68, the leaguewide HR/G was .61 and the PFF was 106 which bumped that season down a bunch in my lists. I guess AL pitchers were really slacking off during the year of the pitcher.

[SurhoffRules]

8 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

In 1884 the Chicago Colts allowed 83 homers.  The second most was the Buffalo team at 46, and the average was 40.  Over double the average.

On the other side Chicago hit 142, the average was 40, and the second-most was 39.  They hit so many that the average was higher than the second place team's total.

It helped that Lakefront Park had several fences at or around 200', and in other years balls passing over those fences were ground rule doubles.

One last entry because I was pretty sure I screwed something up in my numbers and it was bothering me. Now I'm pretty confident you have indeed found the winner of this competition (looking at MLB seasons).

The 1884 Chicago colts are even worse if you compared them against the MLB HR/G figure of .22 (NL only was .35). A whopping 329% of the league average. 

If we restricted the criteria to only seasons where the league averaged more than .6 HR/G I come up with the '82 Twins. They yielded 1.28 HR/G to the league's .80 HR/G. Our 2019 Orioles rank 4th in that list behind the '64 Kansas City and the '47 Pittsburgh Pirates.

On the other end of the spectrum is the 1902 Pirates, who surrendered 2 HRs to the league average of 22. Finally, if we raise the criteria to only seasons with a lgHR/G greater than .9, we find the 2011 Giants, who gave up 96 HRs to the leagues 152. The staff gave up 37% less than the average that year.