Because baseball naturally lends itself to an obsession with numbers (and I cannot say for certain whether the game draws me to the stats, or vice versa), even non-fans tend to know the significance of certain milestones like hitting .400 or 60 home runs. As Major League Baseball begins its shortest scheduled season by far this week, announcers and writers have offered a variety of opinions on whether an individual achievement like hitting .400 would “count” in a 60-game season.
I think we can wait to see if anyone gets halfway through this season with a legitimate chance before devoting too much brainpower to that question, but I do think there is a number very much worth thinking about from the outset: 2.7. That’s the multiplier we get from the ratio between a full 162-game schedule and the 60-game Covid-shortened one, so essentially every game “counts” like 2.7 games normally would. Winning 3 in a row is the equivalent of winning 8 in a row in a full season, relatively.
We can use 2.7 to gauge what an outstanding individual performance might look like across 60 games. For instance, 20 home runs would equate to 54 in a full season. In 2019, when players collectively reached record-breaking totals yet again, the highest individual total was 53 by the Mets’ Pete Alonso.
At the 60-game mark last season, the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger had hit 20 and wasn’t close to leading the National League. The Brewers’ Christian Yelich already had 25! That’s a pace for 68 in a full season, but he missed 32 games and fell well short at 44.
So we shouldn’t be the least surprised to see someone get to 25 or even flirt with 30 in this short season, because it’s much less difficult to sustain that level of performance for a shorter time period. Hitting 60 homers in a season remains surprisingly rare and hasn’t been achieved since Barry Bonds hit a record 73 in 2001.
(The 60-homer mark has only been reached eight times in MLB history, in fact. A particularly fun stat is that Sammy Sosa did it three times, more than anyone else, but he failed to lead his league any of those seasons. He finished behind Bonds in 2001 and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999. Should they ever re-open bars, you could probably win a good bet with that piece of trivia.)
While individual numbers will certainly catch our attention in this 60-game season, the standings could offer another place worth watching. Will any team win 40 games? Probably so. That’s a 108-win pace, and in the past two seasons three teams have won between 106 to 108 games.
Don’t be stunned if a team wins as many as 45, though. In 2013, the Dodgers put together a 42-8 midseason stretch. The 1984 Tigers opened the season 35-5. We don’t have to look far for examples of what’s possible in a chunk of a season, which is what this really is.
A team could be equally bad, too. The 1988 Orioles started the season with a record 21-game losing streak. At the 60-game mark, they were just 15-45. The worst team in 2019, the Tigers, went 47-114, and in June and July they were a combined 10-40. They started a semi-respectable 22-33 and then went 25-81 the rest of the way, which would be a 14-win pace in a 60-game season.
