WE wrote a lot about the 50+ HR club here (and teased poor Sarah Langs for her perkiness prior to the incredible and tragic irony that she subsequently was diagnosed with ALS; our other "disease puns" in that post from March '21 are more or less unfortunate depending on just how you parse your personal judgmentalism) so we'll keep that particular update brief.
The Atlanta Braves just hit 61 HRs in June (we'll focus on their overall performance during the past month at greater length below...) to become the 99th team to hit 50+ HRs in a month. Note that when the St. Louis Cardinals (one of the few teams to have a better hitting month than the June '23 incarnation of the Braves) became the first to hit 50+ HRs in the 21st century, they were only the 29th team to do so in all of baseball history. Sixty-nine more teams have followed in their footsteps over the past 22 years, with nearly a quarter of that total stemming from one year--the freakazoid annum blastum of 2019.
The Braves hit 54 HRs in May, which makes them the eighth team in history to hit 50+ HRs in back-to-back months. We didn't cover that in our '21 report, so here's some fresh info: the first team to do so was the 1961 Yankees (natch), with 50+ HR months in June and July. Thirty-five years would pass until the Oakland A's would match the feat, also exceeding 50 HRs in June and July 1996. Twenty-three more years would pass before the Twins set a record for HRs (307) and had five consecutive 50+ HR months in the process. The Yankees and Astros, hot on their heels in the team HR race in 2019, made things close, each turning in 50+ HR months in August and September.
The Dodgers joined the club during 2020, hitting 50+ in the only two full months available to them. Last year the Yankees became the only team with three seasons of back-to-back 50+ HR months (May-June), setting a record for the lowest BA by a team with 50+ HRs (.235). And now, the Braves.
AND it was definitely "Hot-Lanta" last month. The Braves scored seven runs a game, amassing a .943 OPS, which ranks seventh all-time amongst teams with 500+ PAs in a month. (If you adjust that PA requirement up to 900, they rank fifth.) Their slash line: .307/.372/.572. Eight of their regulars had an OPS in excess of .900, led by Eddie Rosario (1.115), Ronald Acuña, Jr. (1.111) and Michael Harris II (1.005).
So who's ahead of them? Of the teams with 900+ PAs, there are the 2003 Red Sox (.945 OPS), the 2017 Astros (.948 OPS), the previously mentioned 2000 Cardinals (.959 OPS). All of these teams made it into the post-season, but the lone World Series winner has remained tainted by trash cans.
But there's one more team ahead of them, a team that didn't make the post-season in the year it posted the highest monthly OPS in history (1.035!). Of course, they didn't have divisions or wild cards in 1930, so if you finished third--as this team did--you were, as "they" say, SOL.
Since Joe the P., who was on a version of this story earlier today, was unwilling/incapable of taking you back to see what the greatest hitting month of all time looked like, we fished the data out of David Pinto's handy Day-By-Day Database and posted it (above). Three .400+ hitters and Babe Ruth--holy moly! And three more guys hitting > .340. (We've been told, of course, that batting average is "meaningless," but it's OK for you to be impressed anyway.)
The Yankees went 20-8 in June (as opposed to the Braves going 21-4 this past month) to move within two games of the A's at month's end, but their pitching was lousy, and even more so in the second half. And even the Hall of Famers here--Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, Bill Dickey (and don't forget Red Ruffing, who hit .474!)--couldn't score nine runs a game all year long.
We're not sure about the Braves (and, BTW: why don't they have to change their name if the Indians did?) and their ability to keep things at this level...or, rather, we should say we're certain they won't keep things at this level! At some point later in the year we'll demonstrate what happened to "peak-month" hitting teams in the month after their big uplift. (Hint to all you erstwhile geologists: subsidence!) But we suspect they'll still remain the NL's best team even when the "Hot-Lanta" hitters cool down.
More June data in upcoming posts...stay tuned.
