(Except for Eric Hosmer)
There were 41 homers hit across 15 games in Major League Baseball on Tuesday night, led by two from Yoan Moncada for the White Sox, who hit four as a team. It wasn’t the highest total for a given night, but it’s a very high total. I mused on Twitter that if your fantasy team didn’t have three homers, it probably was losing ground to the field in your league. Through 512 games this season, there have been 673 total homers, or 1.31 per game. As a point of reference, last year the league averaged 1.15 homers per game. But that’s not the most eye-opening stat. In 2017, when the juiced ball was at its juiciest, the league averaged 1.26 homers per game. In other words, we’re already on a record pace for homers, ahead of a season which was an extreme outlier in its own right.
There could be some reason to think that we haven’t yet reached the eventual level of home run production. The Rockies have only played five games in Coors Field. We’re still in April and it’s not yet warm everywhere in the country. And while there have been some huge injuries (the Yankees say hello), general attrition has yet to occur in most places, so hitters aren’t yet going up against the 17th, 18th, and 19th pitchers in an organization’s 40-man roster.
This was the “Draft, Drop and Re-bid” Week for Touki Toussaint, wherein I made two mistakes within the course of a couple of weeks and tried to rectify them with a round of bids in the leagues where he was available. (Narrator: “He failed.”)
I took Toussaint in the 20th round of my NFBC Main Event league, only to watch in horror the next day when the Braves sent him down. I waited a week, but then had to cut him when other roster needs arose. So naturally he got called back up this week and pitched brilliantly in relief of my least favorite draft pick of the entire draft season, Sean Newcomb, who I begrudgingly took in the 22nd round. Anyone in the draft can attest that it was a grumpy pick, too. At least I’ve now cut him, but I hate wasting a pick on someone that I didn’t really want because he was a “value.” I don’t know how many more times I have to relearn that lesson, but it was at least this one more.
