In college baseball, home runs are on the rise

By the numbers: Entering Tuesday, there were 16,649 home runs in Division I baseball this season — a rate of 2.25 per game that is the highest ever. That continues an upward trajectory across the past three full seasons, shown below by the tally through the same number of weeks:

• 2023: 16,649 HRs (2.25 per game)
• 2022: 14,452 HRs (1.99 per game)
• 2021: 10,744 HRs (1.71 per game)
• 2019: 10,630 HRs (1.46 per game)

The big picture: Home run prevalence has gone in waves through the years, but the past decade has seen particularly drastic changes.

• Before the 2011 season, new bat guidelines were implemented to dampen the offensive explosion that began in 1974 with the introduction of aluminum bats. It worked, as the HR rate was nearly cut in half that first year (1.88 to 1.04 per game).
• By 2014, the rate reached an all-time low (0.78 per game), so the NCAA introduced flat-seamed baseballs to reverse the trend. Again, it worked immediately, and by 2019 the rate seemed to normalize at roughly 1.5 per game. Now, those rates are anything but normal.

Between the lines: Some factors contributing to this spike may include improved bat technology and the increased use of TrackMan (tech that provides better training data, and thus creates better players). But the most logical reason for the HR boom likely stems from two COVID-related changes.

• In the wake of the pandemic, the NCAA granted athletes an extra year of eligibility and Major League Baseball reduced its draft from 20 rounds to five, yielding a glut of MLB prospects and fifth-year seniors in D-I.
• Those better, more experienced players would likely be out of college under normal circumstances. Instead, they're helping fuel this historic surge in dingers.