Last night’s World Series contest between the Phillies and the Yankees featured five solo home runs — one apiece from Hideki Matsui, Nick Swisher, and Carlos Ruiz, and two for Jason Werth.

Is there anything in baseball more boring than a solo home run? I mean, sure, it can be pretty darn interesting in the right context, like if it’s a walk-off solo home run or something. Or if it kills a seagull mid-air. But to me, a game with five solo homers tells you a) that the pitchers are throwing strikes and generally keeping runners off the bases and b) that they’re still not really pitching well enough to make the game interesting as a pitchers duel. For these reasons, I consider that a game with five solo shots has to be one of the most boringest kinds of games to watch.

Unless you were a Yankee fan, the most interesting parts of last night’s game were a) the appeal on A-Rod’s homer in the 4th (a two-run homer, let’s note) and when Jimmy Rollins tore up the basepaths in the 2nd, stealing second off of Andy Pettitte and swiping third (he then had to go back to second after Chase Utley fouled off the pitch). That’s about it.

Yes, the game was close enough to maintain suspense until the late innings. But I hope that tonight’s game offers something a little more interesting than the sight of one ballplayer trotting around the bases…five different times.

I’m not sure whether it’s the new stadium or just a lot of guys peaking at the same time, but assuming current levels of play and no major injuries, all nine members of the Yankees everyday starting lineup are on pace to hit at least 20 home runs this season.

If the Yankees could pull of this feat, they would shatter the previous record of 7 players on a single team with at least 20 homers, shared by the 1996 Orioles, the 2000 Blue Jays, and the 2005 Rangers. Not surprisingly, the Yankees are currently second in the majors with 116 homers, behind only the Rangers, who have 117.

The weakest link out of the starting 9 is Melky Cabrera, but even he already has 8 homers despite being benched for most of April.

At this point it is still probable that at least one or two players will slump or get hurt to the point that they fall short of all nine players hitting 20 bombs or more, but at least for half a season, the Bronx Bombers have lived up to their famous nickname by absolutely crushing the ball.  And that despite the team’s most powerful hitter, A-Rod, missing a month and a half out of the first three.

There’s been lots of frowning and brow-furrowing so far this season about the rate at which homers have been sailing out of the yard at the new Yankee Stadium, but the sooner we can all just accept it, the sooner we can move on with life and the enjoying of baseball.  Because a stadium that already cost over $1 billion is certainly not about to be significantly rebuilt.

Which is why it is so refreshing to see the approach that MLB.com is taking to the whole affair (as self-serving as it may be), with their unveiling this past week of the video series “Yankee Stadium Home Run Watch,” in which a video is posted each day showing each of the homers hit that day at Yankee Stadium and then providing a summary of the home run pace the stadium is on so far this year and comparing it to the pace needed to break the single-season single-venue homer record of 303 bombs, set by Coors Field in 1999.

Watching the videos actually makes the viewer start to feel excited by all the homers at Yankee Stadium, and to root for it to smash the old record. Which is how it should be, because baseball is supposed to be fun.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Mets’ third baseman David Wright is having kind of an odd year. Much of his numbers are more than solid – most notably the .333 AVG (6th in NL) and the .432 OBP (also 6th). But with 213 plate appearances in the books this year, Wright is stuck on 3 HRs and is on pace for only 10 dingers for the season. And that’s not the odd part. The oddity is that the guy has been stuck on 3 HRs for nearly a month and is yet slugging .483. That’s a pretty rare disparity between low HR total and high slugging.

To get a sense of how rare this would be if Wright maintained this rate (he probably won’t, but bear with me), I checked to see when’s the last time anyone has slugged so high while hitting less than or equal to 10 homers (minimum 600 PAs). The answer? In 1988, Wade Boggs slugged .490 with five measly HRs. In fact, Boggs (also did this in 1986 and 1983), Tony Gwynn (1987) and Willie McGee (1985) are the only three hitters to qualify under the criteria since the 1961 expansion.

What’s more, both Boggs and Gwynn were more reliant on their batting averages to sustain their slugging percentages than Wright is right now. The Mets’ golden boy has a .150 ISOP (isolated power = slugging % – batting average), meaning that he is getting more extra base hits than Boggs or Gwynn did in their respective qualifying seasons.

But Wright’s performance this year has thus far been a near mirror-image to Willie McGee’s 1985, when the Cardinals center fielder (and one of the most awkward runners I have ever seen in my life) led the league with a .353 batting average to go along with a .503 slugging (equaling Wright’s .150 ISOP) and 10 home runs, earning Willie his first and only MVP Award.

And if that’s not odd enough, Wright is on pace to steal 40 bases – far more than the 21.5 SBs he has averaged since 2005 – which again is reminiscent of McGee’s ‘85 when he stole 56 bases (a good deal more than he had ever or would ever swipe again).

However, like I said, it’s a pretty safe bet that Wright won’t be joining the ranks of those stars of the 1980s because of one of two reasons (or both):

1. David currently has a ludicrously high .460 BABiP which leads all of MLB. A return towards his career BABiP of .348 will surely drop his batting average considerably (and along with it, his slugging).
2. He’s got more power than this. Sure, Citi Field is looking to be a major pitcher’s park. But that alone doesn’t explain everything as only one of Wright’s three homers has been hit on the road. And seeing as his GB/FB ratio and infield fly % are still in line with his career patterns, there’s really no reason to believe (yet, anyway) that something is truly amiss. It’s still a pretty safe bet to claim that Wright’s home run totals – especially on the road – are bound to improve quite a bit. We had a similar situation two years ago and Wright still finished with 30 HRs.

So I’m afraid that this statistical anomaly won’t last very long. Either David’s slugging is going to come down or his HRs are going to return. But I like abnormalities like this – especially when it gives me a chance to think about Willie McGee.

The rate at which home runs have been flying out of the new Yankee Stadium has been a hot topic since the first weeks of the season, but up to now the statheads have been urging caution and calm. “Small sample size” they have cried.

But as we close in on the two month mark, it is becoming increasingly more clear that New Yankee Stadium is one of the greatest home run parks of all time.

Indeed, in only its first season, the stadium is already on pace to smash the mark for most home runs hit at a ballpark in a single season.  The current record was set at pre-humidor Coors Field in 1999, when 303 homers were bashed (making Coors only stadium ever to surpass 300 thus far). But with 82 homers hit at Yankee Stadium already in only 22 games, the stadium is on pace for a ridiculous 317 homers this year.

Averaged out, an astounding 3.91 homers per game have been hit in the Bronx so far this season. By comparison, 1.98 homers were hit per game at Old Yankee Stadium last season, which is right around the typical American League average of about 2.00 per game.

What went wrong

So what exactly is wrong with New Yankee Stadium?  Well, recent wind studies have demonstrated that the new ballpark is about 20% more likely than the old one on any given day to have a wind blowing out to the outfield of 10 mph or more, with the likelihood increasing even further in the spring and fall. Given that a tail wind of 10 miles per hour will cause a typical borderline homerun ball to travel about 25 feet further, a significant assist that is only increased as the windspeed goes up.

Just watching the highlights of the homers hit out of New Yankee Stadium so far, this wind assist is plain to see. Anything hit fairly high in the air takes off once it gets into the wind, especially to right field. Guys are hitting home runs one handed, or even when they get jammed or get too far under the ball.  And when players actually do hit the ball right on the screws, they are hitting monstrous bombs.

Only adding to the homer woes, the stadium designers pulled a fast one with the dimensions in right field.  Although the most often cited dimensions, such as down the foul lines and to straightaway center are the same as the old park, thus preserving “Yankee tradition,” the designers flattened out the sharp dogleg in the right field wall, meaning that in some places, the right field wall is as much as nine feet closer to home plate in the new stadium.

This is pretty huge, and very significant when the old stadium was already legendary for having one of the shortest right field porches in the entire game (allegedly designed for the Babe).  Already this season somewhere in the region of ten homers have been hit out to right field that would not have gone out in the old stadium, just judging by distance alone, before wind is even taken into account.

What to do now

It’s obviously a little too late to go back and fix a $1.5 billion stadium.  And I’m actually of the opinion that having different stadiums that play differently is one of baseball’s charms, unlike football or basketball where the dimensions are always identical.

But what the Yankees do need to do is build a team that will be best suited to their stadium. And they need to start now.  Here are my recommendations:

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In the prime of his career at age 27, San Diego Padres firstbaseman Adrian Gonzalez is secretly having the greatest season of all time.

He is actually leading the entire Major Leagues in home runs with 15, two bombs ahead of Carlos Pena and Albert Pujols. That means he is on pace to hit 68 home runs this season, 5 shy of the record, which is a pretty amazing pace.

But what makes this all even more amazing is that Gonzalez plays half his games in Petco Park–the worst hitters park in the entire major leagues. Indeed, only 4 of his his 15 homers have been hit at Petco, the place where homers go to die.

Is Gonzalez going to be able to keep up his home run king pace?  Certainly not.  Petco is going to drag him down in the end.

But it is amazing to think of what Gonzalez’s numbers might look like right now if his team played in even a major league average ballpark, hittingwise.