The Year of the Home Run Hitters

The Orioles struggled all season long but it had nothing to do with an inability to hit the longball. Everyone knows Camden Yards is a hitters park. However, that advantage is quickly counterbalanced when you look at the fact that the Orioles have to face the toughest division in the all of baseball, especially pitching-wise.

The Orioles finished fourth in all of baseball with 191 home runs. The Bronx Bombers finished first, of course, with 222 followed by the Texas Rangers with 210 and then the Boston Red Sox at 203. It’s funny how three of the top four leaders are in the AL East and if you include the top 5, all of the AL East teams are included as the Toronto Blue Jays are 5th with 186 homers.

In June, the Orioles were tied with the Tigers for the most homers in that month at 35. In July, they were tied with the Red Sox for 40 homers hit in the month.

Mark Reynolds led the team in home runs with 37. Behind him was Hardy with 30. This is the first time the Orioles have had two guys hit 30 or more home runs in a season in a very long time. Adam Jones wasn’t far behind with 25. Wieters hit 22, Markakis hit 15, Guerrero hit 13, and Nolan Reimold hit 13.

Taking a look at last years team, Luke Scott led the team with 27 home runs followed by Ty Wiggington (remember him?) with 22. The we had AJ with 19 (he hit 6 more HR this year), Markakis with 12 (3 more this year), and Matt Wieters with 11 (11 more this year). Clearly, our guys hit more homers this season and then with the additions of Hardy and Reynolds, we added another 67 home runs.

I’m really happy with the offensive situation in Baltimore, which is why I don’t want to spend $150 million on Prince Fielder or $200 million on Albert Pujols. I get that those guys are great players but they can’t pitch. And that’s what we need.

The Orioles lost so many games not because they couldn’t score enough runs but because they couldn’t score enough runs to catch up with their opponents who were scoring almost an average of 5 runs a game. You can’t even win 80 games with that sort of ERA.