In baseball when you think of home runs you think of the steroid era. You had Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire all hitting 60 plus home runs. You would think a team during this era would set a record for most home runs in a season, but it’s not even close. The 2018 Yankees had set the record with a total of 267. However this did not last long because four teams broke this record in the next year. The Dodgers, Astros, Yankees, and Twins all surpassed this record in the year we like to call the “juiced ball season.” Compared to 2018 that season had a total of 82 homeruns that were 450 feet. The 2019 season had more than double that with a total of 183. 2019 was a special year in baseball and we're gonna look at one of my favorite lineups of all time, the 2019 Minnesota Twins.
The 2019 Minnesota Twins hit a total of 307 homeruns which beat the previous record by 40. This record still holds today and I’m not sure if it’ll be broken anytime soon. Home runs were hit more than ever in 2019 due to a change in the baseballs, and I don’t think the MLB will ever go back to it. Making the record very difficult to break.
If we take the 307 home runs and divide by the 9 starting players we get an average home run season of 34.11 per player. In last year’s season the average batter hit a total of 14 home runs. The Twins finished with a record of 101-61 and a disappointing exit to the Yankees in the divisional round of the playoffs. However this was not a disappointing season for the Twins as they had a few new players breakout. Mitch Garver had one of the craziest years for a catcher. He wound up hitting 31 home runs and had an OPS just under 1.000, he did this in only 93 games. Until the 2024 season Garver hasn't even played 100 games in a season and has had no success even close to his 2019 year. He’s barely hit the ball and I think that is what makes the 2019 season so special. We saw Max Kelper breakout with 36 home runs as a right fielder. He previously only had a career high of 20 home runs and his career high OPS jumped over 100 points. There were a lot of players having breakout years in 2019 and then never really performed again, showing that the Twins record will never be broken.
With breakout years from their right fielder and catcher this team slugged better than anyone else. Their best hitter was the boomstick himself Nelson Cruz at designated hitter who hit 41 home runs. The rest of the infield hit a total of 104 with an average of 26 home runs a player. This infield consisted of C.J Cron at first, Jonathan Schoop at second, Jorge Polanco at short, and Migeul Sano at third. Kepler carried the lead in the outfield with 36, and Eddie Rossario in left hit a total of 32. Lastly is center Byron Buxton who had a very injury prone season only hitting 10 home runs. Even with the starting lineup supplying most of the power, the Twins bench was also very successful. Marwin Gonzalez the Twins utility player hit 15 and Jason Castro the backup catcher had 13 home runs.
2019 was one of the best years in baseball and the Twins record is looking pretty difficult to beat. If only Aaron Judge did not get hurt this year, maybe we could have seen home run numbers close to Barry Bond’s record of 73 home runs in a season.
Kommentare