Boom or bust. This is what baseball has become — and that has owners worried.
“It’s just kind of what it is: home runs and strikeouts,” Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ross Stripling said.
Stripling had just given up 10th-inning home runs on consecutive pitches to Houston’s Alex Bregman and George Springer on a night players combined for 10 long balls, nearly double the previous MLB All-Star Game record.
Photo: AP
Last fall, the Dodgers and Astros totaled 25 home runs in the World Series, four more than had ever been hit before in a Fall Classic.
“It’s extremely tough to manufacture hits these days, especially with the shift,” Stripling said after the American League’s 8-6 win on Tuesday night. “I certainly understand that’s where the game’s going, and so I think this game encapsulated that.”
It took until the 344th pitch for a run to be driven in on something other than a homer, Michael Brantley’s tack-on sacrifice fly that boosted the AL’s lead to 8-5.
Joey Votto added the final home run in the bottom half, four more than the previous All-Star mark.
“Everybody’s throwing 97 to 100 [156kph to 161kph],” said Washington ace Max Scherzer, the National League starter. “You’re not going to string three hits together like that. So everybody’s just swinging for the fence.”
Hours earlier, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was expressing alarm.
Strikeouts (24,537) are on track to surpass hits (24,314) for the first time and are likely to set a record for the 12th straight season. This year’s average of 17 strikeouts per game is up from 12.6 in 2005.
The current big league batting average of .247 would be the lowest since 1972, and the average of 2.28 homers per game is just less than the record of 2.51 set last year.
“Standard operation nowadays, right? We’re going to homer-and-punch-out as an industry,” said Astros manager A.J. Hinch, who led the AL to victory. “There’s a great love affair with both results.”
“I don’t really want to see guys shorten up and slap the ball around the infield just to avoid a strikeout. That doesn’t excite me,” Colorado’s Charlie Blackmon, who won the NL batting title last year with 37 home runs. “I don’t mind strikeouts. That doesn’t mean I want guys swinging way out of the zone, but it doesn’t bother me.”
Many have cited shifts as the cause of the big shift in offense, transforming ground balls that once were hits into outs.
There have been 20,587 shifts on balls in play, according to Baseball Info Solutions.
That projects to a full-season total of 34,668 — up 29.8 percent from last year and an increase from 6,882 for the entire 2013 season.
“There is a growing consensus, or maybe even better an existing consensus, among ownership that we need to have a really serious conversation about making some changes to the way the game is being played,” Manfred said.
“We are not at the point where I can articulate for you what particular rule changes might get serious consideration,” he said.
“I can tell you the issues that concern people: I think that the period of time between putting balls in play, the number of strikeouts, to a lesser extent the number of home runs, the significance of the shift and what it’s done to the game, the use of relief pitchers and the way starting pitchers are going to be used,” he added.
When it comes to change, players can be Luddites.
MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark said that his members are “stewards of the game” and are resistant to tinkering with the rules for fear of unintended consequences.
“We may get to a point where those coming to the ballpark or have an interest in coming to the ballpark for whatever reason aren’t 100 percent certain that what they are seeing is the type of game that they want to see,” Clark said.
Home runs bring the crowd to its feet, especially by the home team. Think back to the 1998 Nike advertisement with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, titled “Chicks Dig the Long Ball.”
The Yankees’ Aaron Judge started the barrage with a second-inning solo shot off Scherzer.
“I know the fans enjoy seeing these homers,” Judge said.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS