2024 Season Home Run Update

Since home run hitting has been up and down during the Statcast era (seasons 2015 through the current season), I thought it would be interesting to compare home run hitting from last season (2023) to the current 2024 season. Since there is a weather effect, I focus on home run data through games of April 21. Since a large portion (around 85%) of the home runs are hit where the launch angle is between 20 and 40 degrees and the exit velocity is between 95 and 110 mph, I focus on home runs hit in this launch variable region.

Home Run Counts

Here is a comparison of the home run counts for regions across this launch variable space. At quick glance, the HR counts look pretty similar in the subregions for the two seasons.

Balls in Play Counts

There is two aspects to hitting home runs. The first is the batter hitting the ball at a sufficient exit velocity and “good” launch angle. We measure this by compute the rates among all balls in play in these 12 subregions. Here is a comparison of the BIP rates for the two seasons. Looking at these rates, I see that these BIP rates are remarkably similar between the two seasons. This is consistent with earlier work where I have found these rates to be similar across the recent three seasons.

Home Run Rates

The second thing to consider is the home run rates for balls hit in different regions of the launch space. This measures the carry properties of the baseball. In recent seasons, this carry effect has gone through many changes. For example, in the 2022 season when Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs, the ball was relatively dead.

So here are the home run rates for the two seasons. The careful reader will notice some differences in the 2023 and 2024 percentages, but there is no consistent pattern and I doubt if any of these changes are statistically significant.

The Take Away

• It is early in the baseball season, so it is probably premature to draw any conclusions about changes between the two seasons.
• By looking only at batted balls hit before April 22, I tried to control for the weather effect. The home run rate in 2024 will certainly increase as we move towards the summer months.
• But at this time, it appears that the batters are hitting the ball the same way in the two seasons. Also the carry properties of the ball appear similar between 2023 and 2024.