The most significant number of the 2020 baseball season was 60 — the number of games most teams played in this pandemic-ravaged year. The Los Angeles Dodgers finally earned their place as World Series champions, and after going 43-17 in the regular season — a record-tying 116-win pace — a lingering question will always be whether the shortened season denied them an argument as one of the greatest teams of all time.
As we close the books on 2020, let’s take one last look at the 2020 season and find one fun, interesting, telling or frivolous stat for each team that tells us a little something about happened.
Jump to a team:
AMERICAN LEAGUE
BAL | BOS | CHW | CLE | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | MIN | NYY | OAK | SEA | TB | TEX | TOR
NATIONAL LEAGUE
ARI | ATL | CHC | CIN | COL | LAD | MIA | MIL | NYM | PHI | PIT | SD | SF | STL | WSH
The number: Ketel Marte, one home run every 90.5 at-bats
We’ll kick things off with Marte, because he’s a good example of the difficulty in evaluating individual players on their 2020 performance. In 2019, when he finished fourth in NL MVP voting, Marte homered every 17.8 at-bats. That was a surprise given his previous output, but the metrics backed up the power numbers as he hit the ball harder and in the air more often.
Marte did suffer a wrist injury in early September, although at the time he said it had been bothering him only a few days. One thing I noticed is Marte’s approach was more passive in 2020. His first-pitch swing percentage went from 28.5% to 21% and his zone swing percentage went from 70.4 to 61.6. That didn’t produce a better walk rate, however, as that figure plummeted from 8.4% to just 3.6%. The Diamondbacks had the second-lowest home run rate in the majors in 2020. They need Marte (and Eduardo Escobar) to get back to their 2019 production, and in Marte’s case perhaps that simply means being more aggressive in the strike zone.