Written by David Schoenfield at ESPN.com
If it feels like you’ve seen a lot of home runs in 2017, it’s because you have: We have a new major league record for home runs in one season.
The record-setting blast came courtesy of Kansas City Royals outfielder Alex Gordon, who took Toronto’s Ryan Tepera deep in the eighth inning on Tuesday for the 5,694th home run in the majors this season, breaking the previous record set in 2000.
Alex Presley of the Detroit Tigers tied the mark shortly before with his fifth-inning homer off Oakland Athletics pitcher Daniel Gossett.
By the end of Tuesday’s games, the season total had reached 5,707 home runs. There were 5,610 homers last year, an average of 2.31 per game. And this year’s average of 2.53 entering Tuesday’s games — well above the record of 2.34 set in 2000 — projects to 6,139.
That’s a dramatic increase from just a few years ago, when everyone was suddenly worried about the lack of power in the game. In 2014, there were just 4,186 home runs hit, the fewest in a non-strike season since 1993, when there were 28 teams instead of the current 30.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, there has been a homer once every 27 at-bats this season, by far the lowest in a season in MLB history (29.4 in 2000).
Seven teams have either set a franchise record for homers or are on pace to: the Royals, Nationals, Mets, Padres, Rays, Dodgers and Reds.
The uptick in home runs began in the second half of 2015 and led to much speculation as to what has caused the barrage of home runs. The most plausible explanation is a change in the ball. Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer and sabermetrician Mitchel Lichtman found that the balls became smaller and the seams got lower — changes that would make the ball smoother and subject to less air resistance. Rob Arthur of FiveThirtyEight.com had findings that expanded on that, noting that there has been a significant decrease in the air resistance, or drag, of the ball, which has led to an increase in fly ball distance and, therefore, more home runs.
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