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This Day In Sports…August 22, 2019, five years ago today:
The Baltimore pitching staff throws itself into baseball infamy, allowing its 259th and 260th home runs of the season, the most in big league history, in a 5-2 loss to Tampa Bay at Camden Yards. A solo shot by the Rays’ Austin Meadows broke the mark sadly set by Cincinnati Reds pitchers in 2016. And check the date. The last-place Orioles still had 34 games to go. They’d end up allowing a jaw-dropping 305 homers that season.
“I’m a broken record when it comes to homers we’ve given up,” first-year Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said in the AP game story. “I don’t know what to say except we have a lot of work to do with our pitchers.” The standard was bound to be eclipsed in a season that saw a record 6,776 long balls leave the yard. The previous high was 6,105 in 2017, and those two numbers remain tops in big league history. The National League record for team home runs allowed was also snapped that season—the Colorado Rockies gave up 270.
The team record for most home runs hit in a season is shared by the 2019 Minnesota Twins and the 2023 Atlanta Braves—307 of them. Both clubs were better on the road than they were at home, as the Twins clubbed 170 away from Minneapolis and the Braves hit 156 away from Atlanta. Minnesota boasted a record eight players with 20 or more homers, and five of those guys topped 30. Also in that landmark 2019 season, the New York Yankees broke another major league mark by hitting a home run in 31 consecutive games.
Not surprisingly, the MLB record for fewest home runs by a team was set pre-Babe Ruth. The Chicago White Sox hit a total of only three home runs in 1908.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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