Baseball's Power-Outage

Since I wrote last about the drop off in home runs in baseball this season, a couple of trusted sources have added their two cents.

Over at Sabernomics, JC got his hands on some game-day temperature data for this decade to see what effect colder weather has on power. He says that only 4 percent of the drop-off this year can be attributed to the cold. Most interestingly, the drop-off in power has been much more dramatic in the American League. For the first time since 1974, the A.L. is on pace to score less runs per game than the senior circuit. But JC is very skeptical that the drop-off is a result of drug testing.

Picking up the thread at Sabermetric Research, Phil Birnbaum puts forth three theories on the offensive anemia and why it's more visible in the A.L.:

• The pitching in the A.L. has improved.

  "Supporting that theory is that, in interleague play to date, the AL is three games above the NL, suggesting that it's still the better league. Of course, that could just be random chance, because there haven't been that many interleague games so far this year."

• Steve Phillips, Thomas Boswell, and most everyone else's claim that drug testing has forced many players to stop using. However, would A.L. players really be more affected than N.L. players?
• Aging. Birnbaum points to David Pinto's analysis at the Sporting News showing that for the first time in recent years, the N.L. is younger than the A.L. and that the younger players in the N.L. are better than their A.L. counterparts. This bodes well for the senior, now junior, circuit long-term.

Of course, a fourth argument is that the home run drop-off is just a statistical blip. Are there any winners in a scenario where the home run levels fans have gotten used to over the past decade are diminished? As Skip Sauer points out, general managers may like the idea that they won't have to pay big wages for sluggers. But at the same time, fans like power, so owners will eventually take a hit in the wallet.