As fans, we all love watching our favorite players hit home runs. Luckily for us, we are tuned into a game that is experiencing a home run explosion in recent years, a trend that does not seem to be waning.
Since Statcast began tracking such numbers in 2015, average launch angle has increased better than two degrees while barrel rates have ticked up more than 2.5 points to 7.9%. In turn, we are seeing a barrage of longballs across the baseball landscape. Thus far in 2019, there have been 2,239 home runs hit in 63,911 plate appearances. For perspective hitters mashed 2,079 home runs in a similar sample size in 2017, a number that actually fell to 1,889 in 2018.