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With Judge & ‘juicy’ baseballs powering historic season, Monday’s Derby is must-see
It’s quite fitting that the most highly-anticipated Home Run Derby in the 32-year history of the event, featuring the astonishing power of Aaron Judge, will take place in a season when baseballs are flying out of ballparks at a historic rate. Indeed, the TV ratings are expected to be unprecedented because, well, who doesn’t want to see how far Judge can hit the ball in such a setting? Who doesn’t want to see him and fellow 6-foot-7 masher Giancarlo Stanton match up in the finals?
The derby has always had a must-see element to it for me, because even though ESPN turned it into a way-too-long, three-hour TV show, I watched for the wow factor — like Josh Hamilton sending the crowd into a frenzy with those 28 home runs in the first round at Yankee Stadium in
2008.
So Monday night should make for great theater, with the likes of Judge, Yankee teammate Gary Sanchez, Dodgers’ phenom Cody Bellinger, and Stanton, the defending champ, all part of the show.
But this year there will be a larger question hovering over the event as well: has Major League Baseball helped create this derby buzz, and thus more interest in the sport, by intentionally juicing the ball? MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has made a point of saying no, nothing is different about the baseball, but if you watch regularly you know that’s hard to believe, as balls that don’t look well-hit go over the wall too often, and sometimes to the opposite field.
As one NL scout said by phone this week, “The one that left no doubt something is going on was (Jacob) deGrom hitting a ball out to left-center (at Citi Field). I almost fell out of my seat when I saw that one.
“He’s not a bad-hitting pitcher but he’s not a guy with any real pop. To see him hit one to the opposite field like that, I had to laugh.”
The numbers certainly beg for some explanation. Hitters just set a record for most home runs in a month, blasting
1,107 dingers in June, and they are on pace to shatter the single-season record of 5,693 home runs that were hit in 2000, when steroid use was running rampant and new standards were being set for offensive numbers.
Drug-testing reined in those standards, and while some players surely are still finding ways to beat the testing, virtually no one in baseball believes the use of performanceenhancing drugs is the reason for the huge spike in home run totals.
“The stuff players are using to beat the system today,” says one MLB executive with knowledge on the subject, “is more about recovery and short-term burst than the artificial enhancement you saw in the pre-testing days.
“It’s in and out of their system in a matter of hours. It’s not the hardcore stuff that (Barry) Bonds was using to hit the ball farther in his late 30s than he did in his prime. That’s not what’s happening in today’s game.”
But something is happening. Al Leiter, the former Met and Yankee pitcher who is an MLB Network analyst, says the way the ball is flying now reminds him of those bygone days when Bonds was hitting 73 home runs in 2001.
“I pitched in the teeth of the steroids era,” Leiter said by phone on Friday, “and there were times you knew something was up. You knew when a hitter barreled one against you but there were times when you’d make a good pitch in a good location, the hitter didn’t get the barrel on it and it still went out.
“Once in a while you’d give one up like that
to the
opposite field and you’d say, ‘what the hell is going on?’
“I’m seeing that again this year. Balls you know just aren’t hit that well are going out to the opposite field and I’m saying the same thing: ‘what’s going on?’
“I don’t think it’s PEDs this time. The testing is too strong. So what is it? The weight training hasn’t changed just in the last couple of years. The bats they’re using now have been around for awhile. So what else could it be if it’s not the ball?”
That’s a conclusion many observers have reached. And by now you’ve surely heard the complaints from pitchers who insist the ball is harder and has more bounce to it than they’ve ever seen.
Likewise, you’ve probably noticed that blisters are more of an issue this season, and for pitchers who have never had such a problem in the past. They say they’ve had to dig their fingers deeper into the ball to get a grip on the seams that are not as raised as in the past.
“It’s obvious they’ve done something to the ball,” Blue Jays’ righthander Marcus Stroman said after being forced out of a start at Yankee Stadium last week due to a blister.
Other pitchers have made similar comments, including the Rays’ Jake Odorizzi, who recently was quoted saying he was convinced MLB changed the baseball “and didn’t really divulge it to anybody.”
Hitters, meanwhile, point to the combination of higher velocity from pitchers and a more home run-oriented approach on their part, which includes record strikeout totals and an emphasis on launch angles, as a reasonable explanation
for the surge in long balls.
As Judge, the major-league home run leader, said at the Stadium last week, “I think guys have a mindset to do damage rather than just put the ball in play. And with the velocity pitchers throw with today, if you barrel it up the ball is going to go a long way.”
No doubt the allor-nothing nature of hitting these days is a factor, but it’s hard to believe that accounts for the acrossthe-board jump in home-run totals that goes beyond the game’s true sluggers.
Last season, a record total of 111 players hit 20 or more home runs, and as of Friday more than 125 players were on pace to do it again.
And to think, it wasn’t so long ago that offense was on the decline in baseball, after drug-testing was introduced in 2004.
As recently as 2014, baseball officials were concerned about the lack of offense in the game, as decreasing home-run totals reached a post-testing low of 4,186 that season.
Naturally, that leads to speculation that MLB decided to have the ball wound tighter, in the hope of adding offense, and the evidence is surely more compelling than Manfred’s denials.
Ok, but home runs are good for the game, right? Well, the downside is that all the long balls, combined with the strikeouts — as well as walks — has created less action in games than ever. That plus the everincreasing length of games, due partly to pitchers nibbling at the corners to
avoid contact, and managers using relievers to reduce the odds of hitters going deep, has MLB officials worried about the entertainment value of their sport for the paying customer.
It’s the reason pace-of-play changes are coming in the years ahead, but all of that is for another day.
For the moment, let’s celebrate the rise in home runs, as young sluggers like Judge and Bellinger have seemingly come out of nowhere to inject new excitement into the sport — Judge with his freakish strength and exit velocity numbers, Bellinger with the ferocity of his swings.
To say nothing, of course, of Stanton, who was baseball’s must-see home run-monster until the two rookies came along this season.
On Monday the three of them, and others as well, will gather for a showdown of sorts, a home run derby to make up for the many over the years that were less than exhilarating events.
After all, no matter how many home runs are being hit this season, nobody hits them like Judge. More than anything, Monday will be his night to prove that.