Home-run boom — a juicy theory
How else to explain binge in dingers other than altered players and balls?
Baseballs are leaving major-league ballparks at an alarming rate. Something is up, and my government sources tell me that the homer bonanza is not attributable to lax enforcement of the law of gravity by the Trump administration.
There were 1,101 homers hit in June, more than any other month in major-league history. In June 2014, there were 711 homers.
I chalk it up to two main factors: The balls are juiced, and so are the players.
I don’t have absolute proof. Do I look like a scientist? I’m relying on logic and simple observation. Other factors are at play. There is a trend of hitters changing their swing plane, uppercutting the ball to get it into the air. Yonder Alonso changed his swing in the offseason and has 21 homers, after averaging seven the previous four seasons. Even Buster Posey altered his swing, and his batting average is up about 40 points.
The batter’s Walk of Shame, the slink back to the dugout after a strikeout, is now a guilt-free stroll. The boss and the fans want homers, so they accept the trade-off whiffs.
But that’s not enough to explain the homer binge. So let’s look at the balls and the ballers.
We know that steroids were involved in the
famed homer epidemic, circa 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73 and Sammy Sosa 64. MLB ramped up its testing, and homers quickly declined.
Have players returned to the juice? Victor Conte and others say yes. Conte, who helped guys juice back then but since has returned to the honest side of sports, has been saying for years that MLB testing is easy to beat.
Conte says low-dose synthetic testosterone can be taken after a game, work its magic overnight and be out of the system by the next afternoon when the player might get tested at the ballpark.
“The dosages are less than the ’90s,” Conte told Mark Ziegler of the San Diego Union-Tribune, “so you won’t see guys hitting 70 home runs. But more guys are using. It’s working, and — guess what? — good news of making money travels fast.”
There is a general perception by fans that baseball and its players got religion in the wake of the steroid scandals, that the new players are a different breed.
I say no. The same pressures and incentives to cheat are in place, and this generation of players is just as human as the last. For many players, it’s a choice between driving a baseball and driving a truck.
If a player is a stickler for rules and morals, or concerned for his long-term health, he can eschew the juice. And a boxer can step into the ring against a guy who outweighs him by 10 pounds, but good luck.
As for the baseballs: MLB insists that it hasn’t altered the balls and that independent tests show no evidence that the balls are juicier or otherwise more homerish.
I call to the witness stand Mike Krukow, former star pitcher and longtime Giants broadcaster.
“Dick Tidrow could move the skin on a ball,” Krukow told me, referring to the 6-4, 210-pound pitcher (’72 to ’84) nicknamed Dirt. “You can’t do that now. Now the (cow) hide is almost like it’s painted on. You’re hitting a harder ball.”
Many pitchers claim this season’s ball is harder and has flatter seams, and say that’s what’s responsible for a rash of blisters on pitchers’ fingers. Johnny Cueto, addressing the question of whether the balls are different, said, “I think so. Probably. I feel the ball tight.”
If the seams are a bit flatter and the ball harder, it’s more difficult for the pitchers to impart movement, making the ball more aerodynamic and more prone to leaving the yard.
As part of the finishing process at the MLB baseball factory in Costa Rica, the balls are put into a machine that presses the seams. What if someone dialed up the pressure just a tad?
Who do we trust? MLB? If it is tweaking the balls, it has no legal obligation to admit it. As long as the balls are within the specified circumference and weight, however they wind ’em and stitch ’em is their own business.
MLB wouldn’t be breaking any laws or cheating. It would be doing what any smart business is doing: making its product more appealing to the consumer, while trying to keep any unsavory elements of the process on the down-low.
And as Commissioner Rob Manfred said at the All-Star break, “Our research suggests that the home run actually is a popular play in baseball.”
My only quibble with that statement is it proves that MLB is wasting money on research. Coming soon: MLB research suggests that churros outsell spinach-on-a-stick.
We could go back to the pre-1850 era, when pitchers made their own baseballs. Many of them used fish eyes for cores, no joke. But if we did that, too many fish would be blind and unable to find the hooks, and we’d have a food shortage.
Life is about trade-offs. More homers? The hitters are happy, the fans are happy, the commissioner and owners are happy, the pitchers still make a living wage, and if the occasional finger gets chopped into the vat at the chili factory, c’est la vie.