Dartmouth Study Suggests Climate Change Explains Rise In Home Runs In MLB

John Simmons | April 10, 2023
DONATE
Text Audio
00:00 00:00
Font Size

Climate change: is there anything it can't do? Activists tell us it's behind obesity, poverty, the rise of the Islamic state, droughts, flooding, fires and spruce bark beetles terrorizing the western woods. Thanks to some “convincing” evidence presented by two researchers at Dartmouth College, we can add an increase in home runs in the MLB to that list.

Chris Callahan, a doctoral student at Dartmouth, and assistant professor of geography Justin Mankin co-authored a study that they believe shows “unseasonably warm” temperatures explains the striking rise in home runs over the past 13 years. 

Callahan and Mankin analyzed 100,000 MLB games and 220,000 individual hits and overlaid those temperatures with data about “unseasonably warm temperatures.” The conclusion? Global warming can be directly blamed for at least 500 home runs since 2010, and that a one-degree rise in temperature (on the Celsius scale) could make the annual home run total increase by two percent.

“I remember being surprised at how strong the finding was,” Callahan said in an interview with CNN. “We’re not saying that every home run now is because of climate change, but you take the data and slice it any way you want, you find the same thing.

“And as a fan, I indeed am a little bit frustrated that home runs may continue to dominate, as it does now.”

However, the data shows, if anything, what we’ve known all along: more dingers get hit in the middle of the season when it's warm than late in the season when it’s cold.

One of the conclusions Callahna and Mankin came to was that more home runs are hit during warm daytime games in open-aired stadiums, as opposed during nighttime games or domed ballparks. 

But we didn’t need two Ivy League “geniuses” to write a study about it, the average Cracker-Jack eating baseball fan can tell you that! Everyone knows that you see more home runs when it’s warm because the air is less dense; it’s also why fewer home runs are hit in the postseason because the air is often colder, and therefore the ball doesn’t travel as far.

Plus, even if the data suggests that even the slightest change in temperature increases the amount of home runs hit (which we can’t definitively say based on this study), it doesn’t even do it all that much. 

If we take that one-degree temperature rise and apply it to the record-setting dingers per game total we saw in 2019, that means teams would’ve gone from averaging 1.39 home runs per game - to 1.4 that season.

The increase in home runs over the past few seasons is more of a testament to stronger players trying with all their might to go yard every time they’re at the plate, or to variations in ball manufacture as MLB "juices" the ball to produce more home runs.

I don’t think we need to set off any alarms over miniscule temperature changes. But when you’re a climate activist, anything can be a sign that the world is ending.

Follow us on Twitter:

 

donate