Home Run Surge On The Cape Mirrors The College Game
Image credit: Hunter Hines (Danny Parker/Four Seam Images)
Throughout the spring the rising home run totals in the Power Five conferences made headlines week after week. The home run numbers for the first time in the BBCOR era were mirroring that of the “drop 5” era’s peak.
Entering the 2023 summer league season many analysts suspected that home run totals would plummet with the switch to wood bats, the primary standard of bat across all collegiate summer ball leagues. Instead of players getting exposed for fraudulent power in the Cape Cod League, the premier wooden bat collegiate summer league, the opposite happened—we saw a rise league-wide in home runs and two individual performances for the ages.
First, the Cape Cod League total this season of 287 home runs is tied for the third-highest total over the last decade and the fourth-highest dating back to 2010. We’ve seen a steady rise in home run hitting across the league starting in 2017 and it’s held true over the last six seasons. Only the outlier season of 2012, where a Cape Cod League-record 384 home runs were hit, eclipses the totals of the last six seasons.
A quick aside, to call 2012 an outlier is putting it lightly. In the years 2010, 2011 and 2013 the 10 Cape Cod League teams hit a combined 482 home runs. The top two home run totals by teams since 2010 both happened in 2012, with Harwich hitting an eye-popping 64 total homers. Five of the eight seasons since 2010 where an individual player has hit double-digit home runs in a summer took place in 2012. So for the sake of this exercise we’re ignoring the Cape’s juiced ball year.
In many ways 2023 is the second best home run season on record since 2012, as the third highest team total belongs to this year’s Cotuit club with 44. League-wide power performance was on a noticeable uptick as six teams hit for a total of 30 or more home runs, the highest number of individual teams with 30-plus home runs since the aforementioned 2012 season.
While the league totals and team totals tell the story of the home run explosion in 2023, the individual performances of Mississippi State’s Hunter Hines with Yarmouth-Dennis and College of Charleston’s Cole Mathis with Cotuit this summer might paint a clearer portrait of the evolving home run environment.
The last time an individual hitter had double-digit home runs in a Cape Cod League season it was Bobby Dalbec with 12 for Orleans in 2015. Dalbec’s season was a true outlier in the Cape’s history. Outside of 2012’s home run explosion, no Cape Cod League hitter had a double-digit home run season since 2010 outside of Dalbec.
In 2023 Hines and Mathis passed the double-digit threshold, marking the first time two hitters had double-digit home run seasons in the same summer since 2012. Hines, a hulking three true outcomes slugger with a favorable home park in Yarmouth-Dennis, blasted 13 home runs this summer, the most in a Cape Cod League season since Tyler Horan hit 16 for Wareham in 2012. Mathis on the other hand hit for 11 home runs, the highest total for a Kettleer dating back to at least 2010. Mathis did it in style as well—he was the top two-way player in the league.
It was a banner year for power on the Cape, but the reasons aren’t quite known. Was it a stronger class of power hitters than usual? Were the best power hitters in more favorable parks than usual? Has there been a change to the ball or is it weather related? It’s tough to nail down the reason but the Cape Cod League looks to be in the midst of a new era.
