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Game has changed, lot less base stealing, lot less bunting, lot less hit and runs, but more balls going deep and gone
By ARNIE LESHIN, Santa Fe Today
Going, going, gone. Bye, bye baby. It’s out of here. Back, back, back, forget about it.
Sounds familiar, right? The baseball goes off the bat, travels into the outfield stands, and whoever is broadcasting that game provides the sendoff. All mean the same thing, just in a different way, in different words.
And never have all these home runs been given such a ride as the Major League nears a record for four-baggers. All these jolts, dizzying long balls, some making it into the second deck, third deck, even over the wall. These are all traveling more and further.
Nearly two decades after the height of the Steroids Era, the sport, our National Pastime, is on track to wipe out the season record for home runs, and not just the old mark, but smash it like one of those upper deck shots that have become commonplace in the Summer of the Slugger.
We are just another clout closer to the inevitable. Go figure? Well, the figures are all over the place.
So far 5,663 home runs are only 30 shy of the record set in 2000. Juiced balls? Watered-down pitching? The surge of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger? Players bigger and stronger? Maybe better bats? Brushing off strikeouts to give the stitched ball a ride?
Last year, there were 5,610 homers, an average of 2.31 a game. Now flash forward to the present, where this year’s average jumps to 2.53 and projects to 6,143. That would be up 47 percent from 4,186 in 2014.
In just three years, home runs will have increased by 1,957, an extra 149 miles of long balls at this year’s length of 400 feet or 15 miles more than, let’s say, the driving distance between Philadelphia’s Citizen’s Bank Park and Washington’s National Park.
In reality the game has changed. There’s a lot less stolen bases, there’s a lot less bunting, there’s a lot less hitting and running. In exchange, there’s more home runs hit than ever before.
Already 107 players have hit 20 homers this season, just three shy of the record set last year, and up from 64 in 2015 according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Along with soaring shots come strikeouts, which will set a record for the 10th consecutive year. Currently, there have been 36,964 whiffs, an average of 8.25 per team per game and which translates to 40,099.
Says Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson: “The focus is hitting homers and tolerating strikeouts. Now I don’t really like the strikeouts and I was the king.”
The bullpens are making it extremely difficult. From basically the starters on you’re going to have elite hard-throwing guys that are looking to strike you out every single time. The game right now is as a max effort as it’s ever been. Guys are throwing harder. At the plate sometimes you have no choice. It’s hard to steer the ball around when its 98 miles an hour and up in the zone.
Jackson set a record with 2,597 career strikeout, maxing at 171 in 1968. Six players have already reached 171 this season, led by the New York Yankees’ Judge 197. He could break Mark Reynolds’ season record of 223 set in 2009.
“Sure”, says Jackson, “you’d have been on the bench. Now, I don’t know if you want a guy on the bench with 40 homers and 90 RBI. That’s Judge, and you aren’t going to sit that on the bench.”
Steroids fueled the home runs surge in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Power subsided after the start of drug testing with penalties in 2004. The home run average dropped in 2014 to its lowest level since 1992, then started rising during the second half of the 2015 campaign.
The sport has said repeatedly that baseballs fall within the specifications in the rules. It has said that there’s no worry some unpredictable substance is fueling the rise. They test the balls, they test the bats, they test the players. Is there something out there that they’re missing?
Perhaps there is, but for now all you can do is watch the balls going, going gone, bye, bye baby, it’s out of here, and just live with it. Next year is another year and who knows what it may bring. But for now, it’s all for the record books.
By the way, history reveals that long ball hitters struck out the most. From Babe Ruth, to Mickey Mantle, to Jackson. That’s the way the game is played and nothing is going to put it out of business.
NOTE: Arnie Leshin covered Major League baseball from 1967 to 1973 with the New York Mets, and from 1980 to 1986 with the Yankees.
