How many runs does a good team score via the HR?

Today we’ll continue on yesterday’s theme about the Mets’ need to add more home run power to their offense.

Whenever you say something like the Mets don’t hit enough homers, inevitably someone will say something like – I want the team to be able to score in a variety of ways. Thanks Captain Obvious! That was really helpful. Of course, a team should be able to score in a variety of ways. You could be the best home-run-hitting team ever, blowing away the 2019 Twins mark of 307 HR, and if you only scored when you hit a home run, you’d have a losing record, one closer to 100 losses than 82.

Now that we know a team cannot live on HR alone, what we need is context. What percentage of runs scored via the HR ball is average? Let’s use 2022 totals to date. So far, there have been 12,582 runs scored in MLB. How many have come via the HR? There have been 3, 114 HR breaks down as follows:

Solo – 1,759 (56%)
1 on – 925 (30%)
2 on – 356 (11%)
3 on – 74 (2%)

So, that’s 4,973 runs this year that have come from homers. That works out to 39.5 or 40% of runs come on homers on a league-wide rate. The Yankees have hit the most HR in baseball so far, with 165 HR, with 271 runs scoring on homers. They’ve scored 520 runs – also the most in the majors – so 52% of their runs have scored via the HR. So, in 2022, average is to score 40% of your runs on homers and the best-hitting HR team in the league scores 52% on homers. There’s your context.

The 2022 Mets have scored 447 runs, hit 93 HR and have 158 of their runs coming via the homer. That’s 35% of their runs coming via the home run, which is below average and significantly below the Yankees.

Average compared to all 30 MLB teams is one thing. But how do they compare to the teams they’re competing for in the playoff race? Here are the numbers for all eight teams with a winning record in the NL:

Team	Empty	1 on	2 on	3 on	Total HR	HR Runs	Total Runs	Non-HR Runs
Braves	93	42	14	2	151	227	462	235
Brewers	67	46	14	3	130	213	442	229
Cardinals	50	39	14	1	104	174	445	271
Dodgers	79	31	12	1	123	181	487	306
Giants	61	34	14	5	114	191	450	259
Mets	50	24	16	3	93	158	447	289
Padres	41	25	13	1	80	134	419	285
Phillies	76	29	16	2	123	190	438	248
	517	270	113	18	918	1468	3590	2122

In somewhat of a surprise, the percentage of runs scored via the HR is essentially the same among the best teams as it is overall, with the best teams having 41% of their runs on homers. Of course, two of the poorer teams in this metric are the Mets and the Padres and they both have winning records. Are they the exceptions that prove the rule or are they proof that you can survive without a HR-heavy offense? I don’t know. But let’s look at all eight of these teams in this way:

Braves – 49%
Cardinals – 39%
Dodgers – 37%
Giants – 42%
Mets – 35%
Padres – 32%
Phillies – 43%

Since the Dodgers are below average in percentage of runs scored via home run, you might conclude that this doesn’t matter. But the Dodgers have been a touch unlucky, with 64% of their homers being solo shots, compared to 56% in MLB. It’s not that the Dodgers are a poor HR-hitting team, as they’ve hit the 5th-most dingers in the majors. They’ve just hit more than their fair share of solo shots.

And the Mets are nearly a mirror image. They’ve hit just the 19th-most homers in the majors and have fewer than league-average solo homers, with a 53% rate.

Let’s do one last chart, with this one showing how the Mets have fared this year versus the good teams in how runs are scored:

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Team	HR Runs	Other	Total Runs	Record
Braves	9	15	24	4-3
Brewers	3	8	11	2-1
Cardinals	9	28	37	5-2
Dodgers	8	7	15	2-2
Giants	11	44	4-3
Padres	4	19	23	2-4
Phillies	20	46	66	9-3
	64	156	220

The MLB average this year is for 40% of your runs to score via the HR ball. The Mets’ average against all of MLB is 35%. But against the best teams, it falls to 29%. This puts pressure on the team not only to come thru with a high BABIP but also to string hits together against the better pitchers in the league. We saw what happened in the first two games of the Padres series when they were facing top pitchers and the HR ball was absent. And we saw what happened when Pete Alonso belted a 3-run homer in the third game, the only one they won. Anecdotally, the entire team seemed to loosen up once Alonso delivered the big blow.

The top five teams in homers in the NL are: Braves, Brewers. Dodgers, Phillies and Giants. All of those teams are competing for playoff spots.

The Mets are 46-16 in games in which they hit a HR and 13-21 when they don’t leave the park. Finally, on the flip side, the Mets’ pitching has been really good this year. But in 28 of their 37 losses, they’ve allowed a home run. At the end of the day, the way to beat good pitching is to hit homers. And that’s only going to get more important once the playoffs arrive and they no longer get to face the Braxton Garrett’s and Martin Perez’ of the world. Instead, you’ll be facing the top pitchers. Among those pitchers with enough innings to qualify for the leaderboards, 16 of the top 20 in fWAR have a BABIP below .300, meaning it’s tougher to string hits together against them in order to get runs without a homer. And 15 of those 20 are on teams with a record of .500 or greater.