Major League Baseball needs to face reality. It’s time to deaden the baseball. Not to create a second Dead Ball Era. Just to get back to normal.
The way home runs are flying, they’re losing their meaning, their relevance, their ability to connect the game of today with the game of yesterday. And if you ruin the home-run records, you’re risking major damage to the sport. We know this because it happened, not so long ago.
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Know why I hated the Steroid Era? It wasn’t just the cheating, the creation of uneven playing fields between those who used and those who did not. It also was the warping of statistics, the distortion of generational comparisons fans and reporters cherish, even though they rarely were apples-to-apples to begin with.
Well, here we are again.
Not with a fresh influx of performance-enhancing drugs, though some players almost certainly are using them, even with stricter testing. No, the sport’s continuing home-run eruption is mostly due to a more aerodynamic composition of the baseball, a development acknowledged by a committee of 10 scientists and data specialists appointed by MLB last season. The rising home-run numbers are not necessarily inauthentic, the way they were during the Steroid Era. But the frequency of homers is nothing short of numbing.
It’s not baseball, it’s Bludgeon Ball. And it’s producing sensory overload.
In the past four days, we’ve seen a season-high 486-foot home-run by Ian Desmond, four straight homers by the Nationals, four in an inning by the Braves, 13 combined by the Phillies and Diamondbacks, a major-league record for a single game. The sport was averaging 2.70 homers for both teams per game, a pace that would shatter the all-time mark of 2.51, set in 2017.
The solution is obvious, and one that baseball possibly could accomplish without approval from the players’ union – the composition of the ball has not previously been raised in bargaining.
The MLB committee determined the ball was traveling with decreased air resistance, or drag. It could not explain how or why the changes in the ball took place, though there is nothing to suggest baseball did anything sinister; commissioner Rob Manfred, too, wanted answers, and released them publicly. Still, this is the third straight season in which the ball has been a major topic of conversation. By next season, baseball needs to act upon its findings, and introduce a different ball.
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The sport previously has reacted to extreme swings in on-field performance, lowering the mound from 15 inches to 10 after the Year of the Pitcher in 1968, then taking the air out of the Rabbit Ball when home runs spiked in 1987. While no one in authority explicitly condemned the Rabbit Ball, baseball’s actions spoke louder than words. From 1985 to ‘87, home runs for both teams per game increased from 1.71 to 1.81 to 2.12. They then returned to even lower levels – 1.51 and 1.46 – the following two seasons, and surely not by accident.
The same kind of adjustment is now necessary. Fans love homers. Children, and many adults, love sugar. But at some point, enough is enough. How can teams accurately evaluate hitters in the current environment? How can they accurately evaluate pitchers? Statistics determine how players are paid. And every night, often several times a night, something happens that is just . . . not . . . normal.
The Mets’ Mickey Callaway and Pirates’ Clint Hurdle are among the managers who cite poor pitching for the record home-run pace, with Callaway saying recently, “Any time you’re giving up more home runs, it’s just execution.” To be sure, the trend of pitchers relying on power over precision is a problem. Hitters also are changing their approaches in this age of defensive shifts, with more trying to increase their launch angles to get balls into the air. But anyone watching the games can see, without confirmation from Statcast, that the ball is flying like never before.
Other professional sports also are gravitating toward extremes – the NFL is more of a passing game now, the NBA a three-point shooting extravaganza. Baseball’s home-run craze, though, is not the product of a natural evolution, a confluence of factors leading to a gradual annual increase. No, the trend is explained far more easily. Triple-A leagues, using the major-league ball for the first time this season, are averaging a home run every 25 at-bats, as opposed to one every 38.2 last season with the old minor-league ball.
This would be known as ringing evidence.
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Here’s guessing that, just as after the 1987 season, baseball and Rawlings, its official ball supplier, could figure out the adjustments necessary to return home-run totals to something close to their previous levels. The subsequent increase in balls in play would be a first step toward reducing the three-true outcome rate (home runs, walks, strikeouts), which is at an all-time high for the fourth straight season.
Yes, the issues with the on-field product run far deeper than home runs. A certain percentage of fans are loathe to accept any change to a game steeped in tradition. But within the sport, everyone from club officials to the game’s top decision-makers decry the lack of action, believing it will limit growth in the fan base. One prominent executive this week described major-league games as “painful to watch.” He is hardly alone in that view.
Baseball, in conjunction with the players’ union, already has adopted a series of rules changes designed to increase the pace of play and reduce the reliance on relief pitching in 2019 and ‘20. It is experimenting with additional, more radical changes in partnership with the independent Atlantic League. The ideas need to keep flowing, the two sides need to keep talking. Change is difficult. But remaining stagnant cannot be an option.
Perhaps more fans would be alarmed over the current state of affairs if, say, Christian Yelich was on pace for 80 homers. No such individual outliers exist; Yelich, the major-league leader in homers, is on pace for a mere 60. He is one of 25, however, who are on pace to hit at least 40, which would far exceed the record of 17 in 1996. Twenty teams, meanwhile, are on pace to hit 200 homers. As noted by ESPN’s Buster Olney, only one reached that total in 2013.
It’s Bludgeon Ball, all right, and even though the circumstances are different, I’ve got the same uneasy feeling I did in the Steroid Era. I’m not sure what to believe anymore.
(Top Photo by Eric Espada/Getty Images))
