Home runs not what they used to be
Baseball’s regular season is finally finished.
Mercifully.
If this had been backyard Whiffle ball, you’d be knocking on a lot of neighbors’ doors — always trying to retrieve some blast that landed three houses down.
Or in the next block somewhere.
The juiced baseballs intentionally employed by MLB (which owns the company that makes these missiles) were launched into neighbors’ properties at a prodigious and alarming rate in 2019.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and his lieutenants managed to do what performance-enhancing drugs could not — turn everyone with a bat into a dangerous home run threat.
Let’s go back to that thrilling moment when MLB’s single-season home run record was broken…
Baltimore’s Jonathan Villar got the big one, No. 6,106.
Villar, a middle infielder with far more steals than long balls on his stat sheet, had hit just 78 home runs during seven full major-league seasons. Yet he socked the historic three-run shot off the Dodgers’ Caleb Ferguson.
If you doubt the juiced-ball theory, Villar’s historic shot was one of 24 homers he managed to urge into the seats this year.
THE THING about Villar’s home run was that it wasn’t exactly a down-to-the-wire thriller on the last day of the season.
It came on Sept. 11, with 18 launching-pad days left in the season.
That was plenty of time for the two leagues to finish with 6,735 home runs, an absolutely obscene total.
Good grief, Barry Bonds might have hit a hundred big flies with these amped-up baseballs in play.
The previous record for total home runs (6,105) was set in 2017. Before that season, the mark stood at 5,693 homers in 2000.
Think about this: Twelve teams set club home-run highs this year alone.
On the final day of the season, Texas slugger Joey Gallo was asked to explain the stupendous increase in long balls, and he claimed that it was a combination of pitchers throwing harder and batters learning uppercut swings to help produce the proper launch angle for fly balls.
Just for a minute — and ONLY a minute — let’s say Gallo is right. After all, he mentioned that hitters also struck out at a historic rate (42,546) as a result of trying to go long.
Unfortunately, as Houston ace Justin Verlander pointed out at the All-Star break, if more batters were simply trying for fly balls, the weaker guys would simply be getting themselves out with flies that never even got to the warning track.
“Instead of that, when I see a No. 8 hitter going oppo (to the opposite field) for a home run on a good pitch, that’s got to be the baseball itself,” Verlander said.
I agree.
GALLO HAS a point that pitchers are throwing harder but with less command — and if you barrel up a 97 mile-per-hour fastball, it’s going to go zinging somewhere.
Pitching truly is wretched almost across the board.
There was irony in Villar getting the record-breaker, since his Orioles pitching staff came close (976) to giving up a THOUSAND runs this year.
Think about that.
Juiced baseball plus crap pitching…
Consider: Only six teams in the American League had a staff ERA under 5.00, and all of them but Cleveland are going to the playoffs.
And where, you ask, were the Mariners in this almighty bombardment?
That’s an interesting side note to the overall story, because the Yankees broke the team HR record for a season last year with 268 (and naturally bumped that up to 305 this season), but until this recent explosion, the record was held by Seattle with 264 homers — all the way back in 1997.
I’m sorry, but you can’t tell me all these new metric points can account for EVERYBODY hitting pitches out of the yard.
Launch angle and exit velocity, my backside.
You want me to believe that nobody was trying to hit home runs in the 21 years from ’97 all the way to this year’s outburst?
Or knew how?
THAT IS just plain idiotic.
I am so sick of hearing the insufferable metrics posse talking about walks, strikeouts and home runs being baseball’s only three true outcomes.
A triple is an outcome, gang, and pretty damn true for the team that scores off it.
There’s no guarantee how they’ll do in the playoffs, which can get mighty weird at times — but Houston is clearly the best team in baseball.
The Astros hit a club-record 285 home runs, had a pitching staff ERA of 3.94 (the only team in either league under 4.00) and decided on a strategy that may become as popular as the shift against hitters who pull the ball.
Houston did not issue a single intentional walk in 2019.
Genius.
Why would you ever put an extra man on base when ANYBODY can follow that with a home run?
I hated this season, and apparently so did a lot of other people, since MLB’s attendance and TV ratings were both down.
Who needs this Home Run Derby every night?
Give us back real baseballs, Mr. Commissioner.
Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He insists that he used to be thrilled when his team hit a dramatic home run — but has considered abandoning his favorite sport because NO homer is now dramatic. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason.
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