The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baby boomers loom very large
First-half HR totals by Judge, Bellinger shaking up game.
MIAMI — The baby bombers are turning everything upside-down this summer.
As rookies, they have moved far beyond being hazed in the clubhouse and instead are making veteran pitchers feel foolish. Too young to know better? More like too big to fail.
Aaron Judge is 6-feet-7 and 280 pounds, with more home runs than any Yankees rookie has ever hit. Joe DiMaggio’s record of 29 was achieved in 1936, but Judge is already up to 30 in just over half a season and in half the at-bats.
Cody Bellinger, much trimmer but still large and in charge at 6-feet-4, has hit more home runs (25) than anyone else in the majors since his major league debut in late April and has set several Dodgers rookie home run marks. He’s getting streaky with it, too. Six times the Los Angeles Dodgers wonder has hit more than one homer in a game.
Want to compare that to some other sluggers who started killing the ball as soon as they got to the bigs?
Mark McGwire has the rookie record with 49. Frank Robinson had 38 and Albert Pujols 37 in their first seasons. Mike Trout was thrilled to reach 30, and why not? It took Hank Aaron four years to top that total in a season.
“I don’t think you think in your wildest dreams that you’re going to be called up to the big leagues and have this kind of success,” said Bellinger, who was one of the eight featured crushers in Monday’s Home Run Derby.
Fame is fickle, of course. Right now, Los Angeles Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball, who hasn’t done anything but play a little summer league ball, is getting tons of media attention, too. Bellinger, 21, is trying to find a little perspective in all of this while also playing a mean first base for a team that Las Vegas figures will reach the World Series.
“I’m a laid-back guy,” said Bellinger, “so being all over TV, it’s cool, but at the end of the day, it’s, you know, whatever.”
Judge also goes about his business in a quiet manner, even though it’s the noisy business of pounding the ball over the wall in those legendary pinstripes.
“This game will humble you in a heartbeat,” Judge said while surrounded by the largest media throng at an interview session for all the All-Stars last week. “I just try to keep going out there and play my best game every day, because I could hit .179 in a couple weeks.”
That’s exactly what Judge hit during a 27-game call-up from the minors to the Yankees last season — .179. He’s 25 and has to work up to this flashpoint. Bellinger turned 22 on Thursday.
Both drive the ball out of the park at tremendous velocity. There are official analytics to measure that stuff these days, but from me all you’ll get is that Judge and Bellinger hit a lot of rocket shots and launch the rest of them as if from a cannon. It’s all pretty cartoonish after a while, but even the old heads of the game can’t help but gawk.
Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly doesn’t gameplan for the Yankees since his team won’t play them this season. He is, however, a former Yankees captain, and that always counts for more.
“Everything I’ve heard, he’s been like a good kid, the whole thing,” Mattingly said. “With my Yankee roots, you can’t help but watch the highlights. Everybody’s talking about him.”
There’s plenty of talk, too, about the number of homers being all over the majors this year. There were 1,068 of them in June and 1,060 in May. Those rank as the secondand third-most ever hit in a single month.
Joey Votto of Cincinnati has 26 at the All-Star break and he’s never hit more than 37 in his career. He downplayed any theory that suggests the baseballs themselves or the leading sluggers are in need of investigation.
“When it’s home runs, it becomes touchy,” Votto said, “because this sport is so connected to its history. We hate the idea of this version of human being better than the previous version of human because of equipment, drugs, whatever it is.
“That’s the evolution of sports. All sports are being made more efficient not only because we select better athletes but because the training of said athletes has improved. I think there’s an ebb and flow. Not long ago, if I’m not mistaken, weren’t they talking about lowering the mound?”
Too early, Votto is saying, to draw hard conclusions on the home run phenomenon of 2017.
And if rookies like Judge and Bellinger are going to require some kind of fundamental change in the game, one suggestion would be to back the mound another 10 feet or so from the plate for pitcher’s safety.
These baby bombers aren’t just kidding around.