The Brewers and Home Runs

You know how any mention of the Brewers offense focuses on how they hit the long ball and don't do much else? The jury is out on how this year's squad with an on base percentage among NL leaders changes the story but I thought it would be fun to look at numbers from years past.

One of the recent knocks against the team's power offense is that they hit a lot of solo home runs. The reasons thrown out there for this seeming trend are numerous: changing approach with runners on base, too much swinging for the fences and not enough getting on base for other sluggers, and just plain being bad with runners in scoring position are just a few. It seems to me if the Brewers were/are solo home run heavy, they should score fewer runs per home run than the rest of the league. Granted, people only care about the last few years, but the numbers are out there so why not post all of team history?

The 2009 numbers are through Wednesday's games. Barring a major collapse in September, this will be the first season since 2004 and eighteenth in team history in which the Brewers score more runs per home run than the major league average.

That's all well and good, you might be saying, but it doesn't really matter. That's true, this is more trivia than a diagnosis of the ills and skills of the Brewers offense, such as they are. After all, the 1992 Brewers finished fifth in the majors in runs scored but 24th (of 26) in home runs hit. The fact they scored more runs per home run than average really didn't have much of an impact on their ability to score.

For another chart that is perhaps interesting but not meaningful, let's look at the percentage of total runs scored coming from home runs. In the chart, HRR stands for "home run runs," a fun way to say RBI resulting from home runs. The higher the percentage, the more reliant on long balls a team is, obviously.

Once again, the numbers are through Wednesday. The Brewers are on pace to score more runs via the long ball than the average team for the fifth straight season. This is the fifteenth such season in franchise history. The 2007 Brewers were really home run or bust. Again, this doesn't really mean anything other than the Brewers like power hitters. If you wind up in the top 5 in runs scored, it doesn't matter if you get there by slap hitting or big flies, although the goal should always be to hit 200+ home runs and still be below average in HRR/R, no?