Solo Home Run Rate and the 2014 St. Louis Cardinals

Almost seven years ago, I attended a St. Louis Cardinals game at Busch Stadium that went into extra innings. Ryan Ludwick ended that contest against the Rays with a walk-off home run. It was a solo shot. After the game, I remarked that the Cardinals seemed to hit a lot of solo homers. So I decided to see if my observation was true. I had to develop a new stat, which I called Solo HR%, which measures the share of homers that come with the bases empty, to answer my question, so I wrote a Fanpost about it. I've kept track of Solo HR% ever since.

The MLB overall Solo HR% typically ranges between 55 and 60%. In 2013, the MLB Solo HR% was the highest it has been over the last decade. It fell back down to earth a little bit in 2014. Here's a chart with the MLB-wide Solo HR% for each of the last ten years.

MLB Solo HR% (2005-14)

You may recall the Cardinals' tremendous performance with runners in scoring position during the division and league championship 2013 season. That performance carried over into the dinger department. The Cards clubbed the majority of their homers with ducks on the pond. In fact, at 52%, their Solo HR% was one of the lowest in baseball.

The Cardinals' Solo HR% fortunes changed for the worse in 2014. Their Solo HR% went up. Consequently, they didn't score as many runs via the long ball last season as they had during the season before. Not only did the Cards hit the fewest number of homers in all baseball last year, but they scored runs at a lowest rate when they did swat a pitch over the outfield wall than they did in 2013.

In 2013, the Cardinals scored an average of 1.63 runs per homer. That was the fourth-highest such rate in all of the majors. Last year, St. Louis plated 1.53 runs per home run. That was below the MLB-wide rate of 1.58 runs per dinger.

Solo HR% and R/HR don't make a huge difference, to be sure, but they do have any impact. If the Cards had equaled their 2013 R/HR rate, they'd have plated about 11 more runs in 2014. So they would have leapfrogged the Mets and placed eighth in the NL in runs scored. If St. Louis has posted the same R/HR as the Yankees, they'd have scored 11 fewer runs, which would have dropped them to 11th in the NL in runs scored.

The following chart shows each MLB club's solo homer total, overall homer total, Solo HR%, and the average number of runs per home run (R/HR). You'll note that R/HR doesn't correlate exactly with Solo HR%. Every solo home run may be worth the same run total, but multi-run dingers aren't. Some clubs hit more grand slams or three-run jacks than the clubs that had a similar Solo HR%.

MLB Solo HR% (2014)