Gordon gets MLB to record homer total
Kansas City’s Alex Gordon hit Major League Baseball’s record 5,694th home run of 2017 on Tuesday night, breaking a season record set in 2000 at the height of the Steroids Era.
Gordon’s home run off Toronto’s Ryan Tepera, which cut the Royals’ deficit to 5-2, was his eighth this season and the 159th of his 11-year big league career.
It was the 17th of the night and came just after Detroit’s Alex Presley tied the record when he connected at home against Oakland’s Daniel Gossett.
There were 5,610 homers last year, an average of 2.31 per game, and this year’s average of 2.53 entering Tuesday’s action projects to 6,139. That would be up 47 percent from 4,186 in 2014.
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 season.
When the previous record of 5,693 was set in 2000, Sammy Sosa led the major leagues with 50 home runs and Barry Bonds hit 49.
■ Yankees: Luis Severino was moved up two days by New York and is scheduled to start Wednesday against Minnesota.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi said the move was made to give Severino three more regular-season starts as the Yankees try to overtake Boston in the AL East.
Severino had been slated to start Friday at Toronto and will be replaced against the Blue Jays by Masahiro Tanaka.
A 23-year-old righthander, Severino is 13-6 with a 2.93 ERA in 29 starts this season, and has not allowed more than one earned run in nine of 12 outings since the All-star break.
■ Braves: Atlanta received final approval for a new spring training complex near Sarasota, Florida.
The team plans to break ground next month after city commissioners in
North Port voted 3-2 to approve the $100 million complex, which was initially estimated to cost $75-80 million.
The facility is set to open in 2019, meaning the Braves will spend one more year at their current Disney World complex where they have trained since 1998. The team said it needed a new facility closer to other Grapefruit League sites, which are now largely bunched along the Gulf Coast and in
South Florida.
The Detroit Tigers’ facility in Lakeland is the only one within an hour’s drive of Disney World.
■ Cardinals: St. Louis activated right-hander Adam Wainwright from the 10-day disabled list.
The 36-year-old Wainwright had been sidelined by a right elbow impingement. Manager Mike Matheny says he will pitch of the bullpen.
Matheny said they will put Wainwright “in there when it works and see what we’ve got.”
Wainwright pitched out of the bullpen when he made his big league debut with the Cardinals in 2005, but he hasn’t made a relief appearance since the end of the 2015 season. He is 12-5 with a 5.12 ERA in 23 starts this year.