The Reds’ Pursuit of Historical Ignominy

Last night, Kris Bryant became the first player in Major League history to hit three home runs and two doubles in the same game. His offensive barrage was part of a five homer attack by the Cubs — Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo also went yard last night — in their 11-8 win over the Reds. But while Bryant’s game was indeed spectacular, we also shouldn’t be too surprised that it came in Cincinnati, because the Reds staff is allowing dingers like no pitching staff in baseball history.

Through 77 games, the Reds have allowed 129 home runs, 23 more than any other team has allowed this season. That works out to 1.7 homers allowed per game, a pace that would shatter the all-time record for home runs allowed if the Reds were to keep serving longballs at this rate. The title of the most homer-prone pitching staff in history currently belongs to the 1996 Detroit Tigers, who allowed 241 homers, or a rate of 1.5 homers per game. They edged out the 2000 Royals, 2001 Rockies, and 1999 Rockies, all of whom were attempting to pitch during the height of baseball’s “Steroid Era”, when home run records were falling left and right.

To break the record, the Reds would have to allow 113 home runs over their remaining 85 games, a 1.3 home run per game pace that would be somewhat formidable for most pitching staffs. But for this particular group of hurlers, it’s actually not that hard to imagine them breaking the record.

Over on our Reds depth chart, we currently have 25 different pitchers projected to throw at least a few innings for the Reds over the rest of the season. The forecasts for those 26 pitchers looks like this.

ALL Pitchers Reds

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Anthony DeSclafani	93.0	7.4	2.6	1.0	.304	71.2 %	3.97	3.92	1.3
John Lamb	68.0	8.4	3.6	1.2	.304	72.1 %	4.28	4.35	0.7
Brandon Finnegan	85.0	8.0	4.1	1.2	.300	71.3 %	4.43	4.53	0.5
Raisel Iglesias	34.0	9.4	2.4	1.0	.309	74.8 %	3.43	3.47	0.4
Dan Straily	68.0	8.3	3.4	1.5	.303	70.5 %	4.68	4.68	0.4
Cody Reed	58.0	7.3	4.0	1.2	.296	71.3 %	4.47	4.68	0.3
Tony Cingrani	34.0	10.1	4.5	1.1	.298	75.3 %	3.83	4.12	0.1
Blake Wood	24.0	9.7	5.0	0.7	.306	72.4 %	3.89	3.83	0.1
Ross Ohlendorf	21.0	9.4	3.3	1.2	.306	73.8 %	3.96	4.07	0.1
Daniel Wright	9.0	6.8	2.6	1.3	.298	71.3 %	4.37	4.56	0.1
Timothy Adleman	9.0	7.1	3.4	1.3	.297	71.3 %	4.46	4.62	0.1
Homer Bailey	5.0	7.5	2.8	1.1	.298	72.1 %	4.02	4.20	0.1
Robert Stephenson	20.0	8.5	4.9	1.5	.297	70.8 %	4.99	5.15	0.0
Alfredo Simon	55.0	6.2	3.2	1.4	.299	68.6 %	4.91	5.00	0.0
Jumbo Diaz	8.0	9.4	3.3	1.2	.303	73.3 %	3.89	3.94	0.0
Amir Garrett	5.0	9.1	4.0	1.0	.296	74.6 %	3.69	3.97	0.0
The Others	13.0	8.9	3.5	1.1	.309	73.6 %	4.06	4.08	0.0
Caleb Cotham	13.0	8.6	3.1	1.1	.303	72.9 %	3.95	4.06	0.0
Sal Romano	5.0	7.5	3.2	1.1	.297	73.3 %	3.97	4.26	0.0
Rookie Davis	5.0	7.2	2.8	1.2	.298	73.0 %	3.98	4.28	0.0
Josh Smith	18.0	7.8	3.0	1.1	.304	70.7 %	4.23	4.20	0.0
Keyvius Sampson	5.0	8.8	4.8	1.3	.302	71.6 %	4.70	4.80	0.0
AJ Morris	10.0	7.6	3.6	1.1	.302	71.1 %	4.29	4.36	0.0
Timothy Melville	5.0	6.6	4.9	1.7	.302	67.8 %	5.85	5.86	0.0
Jon Moscot	30.0	6.0	3.4	1.7	.299	68.3 %	5.47	5.59	-0.1
Michael Lorenzen	34.0	7.1	3.4	1.3	.302	70.4 %	4.59	4.67	-0.2
J.J. Hoover	29.0	8.4	4.2	1.5	.289	73.6 %	4.54	4.97	-0.2
Total	765.0	8.0	3.5	1.2	.301	71.5 %	4.36	4.45	3.6

Not a stellar collections of names there; the Reds plan for pitching this year was to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what stuck, but all they ended up with is a bunch of broken noodles. But even with a pitching staff of replacement level of arms, it is remarkable just how homer prone the entire group is. Of the 25 guys on that list, exactly one — Blake Wood — is forecast to allow fewer than one home run per nine innings pitched. For context, 17 of the 23 pitchers projected to throw for the Nationals over the rest of the season are expected to allow fewer than one homer per nine innings; finding guys who can keep the ball in the park isn’t as hard as the Reds are making it look.

Of course, even with a poor group of pitchers, our forecasts still only call for the Reds pitching staff to allow 102 home runs over the rest of the year, which would leave them with 231 home runs allowed, 11 shy of the 1996 Tigers record. But there is a pretty good reason to believe that the Reds pitchers might give up more homers than our forecasts expect.

You’ve probably noticed that home runs aren’t only flying in Cincinnati right now. After a long stretch of dominance by pitchers, batters turned the tables in the second half of last year, and started launching home runs left and right, and that trend has continued so far this year. Thanks to the second-half homer surge last year, the league HR/FB rate reached 11.4% in 2015, and that carried over to April of this season as well. But then in May, it jumped again, up to 12.8%. In June, the league average HR/FB rate has been a ridiculous 13.9%, and at this point, we really have no idea when this is all going to level off.

We’re now going on six straight months of a big surge in home runs, with the trend increasing upwards at a rapid pace. The average HR/9 in MLB this year is the same as it was back in 2000, and higher than it was in 1999 or 2001, the years that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds surpassed Roger Maris on the all-time single-season home run list. For reasons that no one has been able to entirely explain — a more tightly wound ball makes the most sense, but representatives of the league swear they’ve tested the ball and found no changes — we’re currently seeing the ball fly out of parks at record rates.

And our forecasts aren’t based on that kind of extreme run environment, so if you think this home run surge is here to stay, those HR/9 projections for the Reds pitchers are probably too low. It doesn’t take much adjusting upwards in the league-average HR environment to push the Reds expected HR/9 rate from 1.2 to 1.3, and that’s the mark they’d need to reach in order to break the Tigers record.

Of course, there’s still a half season to go, so maybe the Reds will find a pitcher who can figure out how to avoid throwing batting practice before the year is up. And given that they’re pitching in a year where seemingly everyone can hit bombs, perhaps setting the all-time record for home runs allowed isn’t entirely their fault. But if you’re a Reds fan looking for hope that opposing teams will stop bombarding the outfield seats at Great American Ballpark, well, I don’t have much hope for you. If nothing else is that much fun about this Reds season, at least the fans who buy tickets out there have a good chance at going home with a souvenir.