These kids are out to launch
Bichette and the young Jays measure up in year of the long ball, changing the game plan
The Splendid Splinter gave good
quote, when he was in the mood. And he was intimately familiar with the resplendence of the long ball.
Belted 521 of them, tied for 20th alltime. Including a 502-footer that reached the 33rd row of the bleachers aat Fenway — and crashed through the straw hat worn by one Joseph A. Boucher. Who grumbled afterwards: “How far away must one sit to be safe in this park?”
The slider that Bo Bichette cranked into left-centre at Rogers Centre in the fifth inning on Saturday afternoon travelled 409 feet — his fifth roundtripper in 19 games — was certainly a thing of beauty. Almost as pretty as he is
“He kept throwing me fastballs that looked like they were going to hit my shin and then coming back over and hitting the corners,” the 21-year-old said afterwards of his at-bat against Seattle reliever Taylor Guilbeau, making his major league debut. “Honestly, he made a pretty good pitch that last pitch but I was able to stay inside it and wait long enough.’’
None of the rookie’s home runs have been cheap shots, though some have certainly perplexed outfielders, the waya tthey just kept on going after looking like fly-ball outs.
“Obviously there are parks that are easier to hit home runs at,” continued Bichette, who’s hammered his long balls both pulling and the other way. “For me, it’s more if I hit it good, it’s going to go out. I hit that one good.’’
So did catcher Reese McGuire, with his leadoff homer in the seventh. Both were solo shots and to no avail as the Jays were edged 4-3 by the Mariners. But you take your thrills where you find them and these Jays, who were supposed to play more little ball this year — that was the view, anyway, coming out of spring training — have been laying on the lumber, like slugging teams of yore.
“Managing is about making an adjustment,’’ Charlie Montoyo had observed pre-game. “Almost everybody in the lineup can go deep. So now I don’t push the envelope. I let ’em hit because everybody likes to have a three-run homer. And we’ve been doing it for the last month and a half.”
Indeed, the Jays have whacked 112 home runs since June 16, second-most in the majors behind the Yankees, as of this writing.
“A no-hitter is a classic work of art, a shutout s is a beautiful painting, stealing bases and the hit-and-run are ballet movements. But … there is nothing so beautiful as the arc a baseball makes when it soars out of the ballpark.’’ — Ted Williams
Loads of fun. But that stat would mean more if baseball wasn’t going homer crazy: 5,139 as of start of play Saturday, on pace for a historically gobsmacking 6,857 over a full-season 2019 — by far exceeding the two-year-old mark of 6,105 and the steroid-era peak of 5,693 set in 2000.
Pitchers hate it, naturally. Some, such as Houston’s Justin Verlander, have been vocal about their suspicions that something’s hinky. Juiced, like.
“I’ve seen some balls that, the way they come off the bat sometimes, when you think it’s just a meaningful fly ball, then it goes 400 feet,” said Jays closer Ken Giles, “I don’t really have a theory. Either players are getting stronger, maybe bats are getting a little bit harder, or the ball could be manipulated.”
What Giles and many other pitchers have noticed is that there’s less consistency among balls when they come out of the box. “Maybe two are the same, not like they were five years ago when I broke into the league. Some bigger, some smaller. Higher laces.
“I can’t really say much because I don’t have any proof. We can speak our minds as much as we want but it’s not going to change anything right now about balls going farther. Hit and miss, I guess. For me, it feels like Russian roulette.” With so many young arms on the Toronto pitching staff, few can reach for comparisons with previous years, at least at the big league level.
“From 2016, yeah,” said reliever Derek Law. “I couldn’t tell you the difference, but it’s definitely different. If you hold them in both hands, just looking at them. I thought maybe the size, but could be the laces are more wound tight. They seem to be going a little further this year.
“If you make a mistake now, you’re less likely to get away with it. Before it was the warning track, now it’s 10 rows deep.”
In fact, MLB has more or less admitted there’s something weird afoot, less drag on the balls, which may account for the onslaught of home runs. One theory, arising from scientific experiments conducted last year, is that the centring of the “pill” — the cork substance in the middle of the ball, which is wrapped in yarn — might have been adjusted at the point of production by Rawlings. (The balls are made in Costa Rica.) Or the 108 stitches are smoother, more difficult for pitchers to grip.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has claimed otherwise. “They (Rawlings) haven’t changed their process in any meaningful way,” he said in June. “They haven’t changed their materials.”
He outright rejected that the Lords of Baseball have deliberately had the balls altered to satisfy the public’s thirst for jacks. “Baseball has done nothing, given no direction for an alteration in the baseball,” he told the Baseball Writers Association of America at the allstar game. “The biggest flaw in that logic is that baseball somehow wants more home runs. If you sat in an owners’ meeting and listened to people talk about the way our game is being played, that is not the sentiment among the owners for whom I work. There is no desire on the part of ownership to increase the number of home runs in the game.”
Still and yet. They’re crushing it, moonshots galore. Fifteen teams are on pace to beat their franchise records, led by the Minnesota Twins who have already surpassed their best tally of 225 in 1963.
According to Baseball Prospectus, the Jays are ripping a higher percentage of runs via homers than any other team in the majors this season: 54.18 per cent. It’s called the “Guillen Number’’ and, in fact, teams from 2019 occupy nine of the top 14 spots, out of 2,925 collated. Toronto is No. 1, No. 2 (2010) and No. 8 (2017).
Of course the Jays didn’t make the playoffs in 2010 and 2017 and they certainly won’t in 2019. So maybe it doesn’t translate into quantifiable success.
Juiced or not, hitters most assuredly don’t want to be told that it’s about the ball and not them.
“Guys are throwing harder than ever and throwing more off-speed than ever,’’ said Justin Smoak, who’s sitting at 19 home runs. “The harder a guy throws, harder the ball’s going to come off the bat. The more you spin it, the further the ball’s going to fly.
“The balls feel the same to me. But I’m not a pitcher.”
Going … going … gone.