Solo homers - update

Something I looked into earlier this year was what seemed to be a propensity for the Royals to give up solo home runs. What I found out was the Royals were having some good luck in this regard -- despite giving up what was at the time the most HR in the AL, they were mostly solo home runs, so Royals pitching wasn't stung as badly as they could've been.

I went ahead and looked again, because I'm consistent like that. And because I know the percentage of solo home runs hit against Royals pitching is a scintillating topic of discussion, likely taxing Google's servers with the sheer weight of inquiries on this very topic.

Rumors that I did this out of sheer boredom are unfounded. Anyhow, here -- Royals pitchers, the home runs they've given up, and how many have been solo home runs:

Bruce Chen: 7 HR given up, 7 solo shots

Kyle Davies: 6 HR given up, 6 solo shots

Luke Hochevar: 13 HR given up, 11 solo shots.

Sean O'Sullivan: 3 HR given up, 2 solo shots.

Jeff Francis: 6 HR given up, 4 solo shots.

The bullpen: 14 HR given up, 8 solo shots.

So, the Royals have given up 49 home runs so far in 2011, and 38 have been solo shots for a 77.5% rate, which is well above the usual league average rate of about 55-60%. What that boils down to is that the Royals have avoided about 9-11 multi-run home runs so far this year off of a normal clip for the league, so in essence have avoided giving up about 14-18 more runs than they "should" have.

As you can see, though, a few pitchers have been particularly "adept" at avoiding multi-run shots...Chen, Davies, and Hochevar in particular.

Royals hitters have hit 33 home runs this year, and 24 have been solo shots for a rate of 72.2%, so they've had slightly bad luck in this department. They're about 4-5 multi-run shots off of a normal clip for the league, so they're about 6-8 runs shy in that department.