Pitchers want truth if baseballs juiced
Bob Nightengale: Players are hitting more home runs than ever before
PHOENIX – They walked slowly out of the Yankees clubhouse, down the corridor, took a left into a private family room and were escorted into a bathroom.
This is where Major League Baseball’s drug testers took several players Wednesday morning before their game against the Diamondbacks, customary practice for a sport trying to avoid another steroids scandal.
The trouble is the drug testing police, trying to keep the sport as pure as possible, are hauling in the wrong guys.
The ones that needed to be drugtested are those 5-ounce baseballs.
In interviews over this past month
with everyone from pitchers to scouts to umpires to team officials, they informed USA TODAY that today’s baseball might be juiced more than anyone’s body during the height of the ugly steroids era.
“Come on, just tell us,” Red Sox veteran starter David Price says. “We all see it. Just come clean and say it.”
MLB insists nothing has changed with the manufacturing of the ball but reports that studies last year concluded there is less of a drag on the baseball.
“They could not conclude why that is,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday at the Associated Press Sports Editors commissioners meetings in Manhattan in New York, “but they did have some theories, which in part were that the baseball is a handmade product that is almost exclusively made from natural products. The result of that is there’s going to be some variations in baseballs. You cannot escape that fact. We’re in that range of variation that we don’t know how to eliminate. When the drag goes down, the ball goes further, and you’re going to have more home runs.”
A record 1,144 homers were hit in March and April, averaging 2.62 a game, an increase of 12.2% from a year ago. A record 6,105 home runs were hit in 2017, but now we’re on pace for nearly 6,500.
“I hate to dive too deep into conspiracy theories,” Yankees veteran pitcher JA Happ says, “but it’s pretty wild what’s happening. I don’t want to take anything away from anybody, but some of these homers that go out, you just shake your head. A guy thinks he has a chance almost all of the time now when he gets the ball in the air.
“Nothing surprises you anymore. It used to be that you kind of knew for sure when a guy got you, and now you don’t know. You see hitters get frustrated, put their head down and think they missed it, but the ball still goes out. You hate to talk about it too much because it’s like you’re trying to make excuses, but the numbers are what they are.”
More home runs are being hit these days than ever before in MLB history — yes, more than even when players were juicing out of their mind during the steroids era. Going into Thursday, 16 players were on pace to hit at least 40 homers, four on pace to hit at least 60 and two – Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers and Christian Yelich of the Brewers – to reach nearly 70.
A year ago, Nolan Arenado of the Rockies led the NL in homers with 38.
The Twins, Mariners and Brewers are on pace to hit more than 300 homers, shattering the Yankees’ season- record 267 set last year. The Orioles gave up an MLB-record 73 homers in March and April and are on pace to surrender 381 homers, 123 more than any other team in baseball history.
And home runs are being hit farther than we’ve ever seen. There have been a staggering 50 home runs hit 441 feet or longer, according to MLB Statcast, and 26 homers of at least 450 feet.
“And I don’t even believe Statcast,” Price said. “I think they’re being hit even further. I bring out my (golf) range finder, and that doesn’t lie.”
If you want proof something strange is happening with the balls, check out the numbers in Class AAA. This is the first season MLB balls are being used in the Pacific Coast League and International League, and their home run rate has spiked by a staggering 47.1%, 2.56 homers a game versus 1.74 of a year ago.
“That kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it,” Cubs veteran starting pitcher
Jon Lester says. “The numbers are through the roof.”
The pitchers are asking for a simple explanation
Says Yankees reliever Zack Britton: “If they would come out and were straightforward, just acknowledge what they’ve done, it would be easier to accept. People would understand rather than just try to disguise it as something it’s not. Hey, I get it. You want to bring in a new generation of fans, that’s the goal. We’re in the entertainment business. It’s something to give to the fans to draw them back, and as pitchers we’ve got to adapt.
“But it would make everybody’s job a lot easier if they would just come out and say, ‘Hey we decided to do this to create more offense.’ They can do it. It’s in their rights. It’s not against the CBA (collective bargaining agreement). It’s almost like they’re trying to save face to an extent.”
Baseball would love for someone to come along and break Barry Bonds’ season record of 73 homers, whether it’s Bellinger and Yelich, or even Tommy La Stella. La Stella has hit seven homers for the Angels, three shy of his total of 10 in his first 828 MLB at-bats.
The more home runs are hit, and the longer they go, the more attention it attracts.
Says Nationals closer Sean Doolittle: “It’s a bummer we’re even talking about this because of how poorly it was handled in previous years where the ball was different and we never got a straight answer on it. It just stinks that we’re able to ask this question, ‘Did they change the balls again?’ ”
Still, with no scientific evidence the ball has changed, the telltale sign something is dramatically different, pitchers say, is the way so many hitters are reacting when they hit the ball. Sure, there are still the bat flips and star gazing when guys hit the ball deep into the night, but there’s plenty of hitters sprinting out of the batter’s box when they make contact, believing they might have hit a double off the wall and not having the ball land 20 rows into the stands.
“That’s all you need to see,” Price said. “These balls are going 430, 440 feet, and they’re running full sprint and don’t think it’s a homer. They’re not even getting all of it, and they’re hitting homers to center field. That should not happen. Period.”
Says Diamondbacks reliever Archie Bradley: “Most guys know when they hit a homer, but there are a lot of balls where the hitter doesn’t even know he really got it. That’s the thing that makes you wonder.”
Certainly, there are other factors in play. Hitters step up to the plate these days looking to homer, with no interest in a measly single, with nearly 16% of the hits being a homer. Pitchers are trying to elevate the ball to counter the launch-angle phenomenon, and when they miss, the ball can go a long way.
“I think a lot of it too is that guys throw a lot more off-speed (pitches),” Britton says, “and you have a tendency to make a mistake more often with an off-speed pitch than with a fastball. If you make a mistake with a fastball, you can get away with it a lot of times. A spinning curveball, for instance, can get whacked.”
Statcast reveals only four of the 450plus homers this year were on fastballs 95 mph or harder, with 18 of those homers on pitches thrown 90 mph or less.
“I really do believe there’s a lot of factors involved,” Britton says. “We get all of that. All of these homers are good for the game. Fans love it. All we’re asking is just don’t lie to us.”