Juiced ball? Launch angles? Homers up big

Big-leaguer Cavan Biggio remembers watching as a youngster when the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols hit a ninth-inning homer in the playoffs that kept his father, Craig, and the rest of the Houston Astros from clinching — for a few days at least — a trip to the 2005 World Series.

That year, there were 5,017 regular-season home runs — pretty typical for a league that averaged about 5,000 a season from 1996 to 2015.

A generation later, Cavan Biggio is part of a new wave of sluggers who are smashing balls out of parks at a record pace — the 2019 Major League Baseball regular season doesn’t wrap up until Sunday, and there had already been 6,624 homers by Thursday, demolishing the record of 6,105 set just two years ago.

There are theories behind this spike — including that the balls were “juiced” — but pitchers and hitters alike say they have adjusted to the game’s new reality.

“Coming from the minor leagues, the ball is obviously different in the majors,” said Biggio, now 24 and a rookie second baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays. “I just notice a little bit of carry.”

Teams across the MLB set franchise records for homers this season, including the playoff-bound Washington Nationals, with 225 through Wednesday.

Leading the parade of home runs are the first-place Minnesota Twins, who hit their MLB record-breaking 267th on Aug. 31, with a full month still to play. They’ve since reached 299 through Wednesday, and the division-leading Los Angeles Dodgers have followed at a similar sky-high rate with a National League-record 274 and counting before Thursday’s game with the San Diego Padres.

Age doesn’t seem to matter: Washington’s Howie Kendrick, 36, has hit 17 homers in part-time duty through Wednesday while left fielder Juan Soto, 20, had 34 entering the final days of just his second MLB season. The man on pace to be home run king is a 24-year-old rookie, Pete Alonso of the Mets. He had 51 going into Thursday night’s home game with the Miami Marlins.

The 6,106th home run of the year, the one that broke the MLB single-season record, came on Sept. 11 when Jonathan Villar of the Orioles went deep against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Villar, like many this season, set a personal career-high with his 21st shot of the year.

“They put the bat in the Hall of Fame,” Villar told the Associated Press. “I’m excited about that.”

Why now?

So why the increase in long balls? Some believe in the “juiced ball” theory: The balls are “wound” tighter so hits travel further, much to the chagrin of pitchers like All-Star Justin Verlander. This year the Astros’ ace accused the leagues of juicing.

“Yes. One hundred percent,” he told ESPN in July. “They’ve been using juiced balls in the Home Run Derby forever. They know how to do it.”

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in June this year’s crop of Rawlings baseballs has less drag because of the core of the ball — also called the “pill” — is better-centered, reports said.

For the first time, leagues at the Triple-A level are using the same baseballs as MLB. Correspondingly, home runs rose by 58% over last season, the Associated Press reported.

“To see the big league ball fly for the first time, it’s pretty mind-blowing,” Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Emilio Pagan, a veteran of Triple-A, told USA Today. “Guys that had never seen it before, well, it’s hard to put into words how much farther the big league ball goes, because it’s spun tighter.”

Besides that, pitchers are throwing harder, including relievers who enter the game hitting 95 mph or more on the radar guns. Hitters are swinging harder, and when they do make contact the ball travels further.

Major league hitters, even those in the leadoff spot or at the bottom of the order, are swinging for the fences. A generation ago, a batter with two strikes, especially hitters not in the middle of the lineup, would shorten their swing and try to make contact. It is rare these days that a batter tries to hit the ball to the opposite field, even to move up a runner with a groundout.

A pitcher’s dilemma

With hitters chasing homers and not always putting the ball in play, there has also been a predictable rise in strikeouts. On Sept. 24, Tampa Bay shortstop Willy Adames struck out against the New York Yankees. That was the 41,208th strikeout of the year — an MLB record which has been broken 11 years running.

But rising strikeouts aren’t enough to keep pitchers appeased.

Right-handed pitcher Branden Kline made his MLB debut this year with the Orioles. He said in spring training he had to get used to how the baseball felt in his hand, and he needed to learn how to spin the ball better.

When he made it to The Show in April, he faced another challenge.

“You are facing the best hitters in the world,” Kline told The Washington Times. “When you leave a pitch in the middle of the plate they are going to hit it hard.”

Pitchers young and old have had to cope with the year of the homer at every level of the game. Daryl Thompson, a former Nationals minor leaguer, has pitched professionally for 17 years and spent the past several seasons with the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in the independent Atlantic League.

Thompson said when he was a young pitcher, he and his peers were encouraged to keep the ball down in the strike zone. Now he realizes with the launch-angle analysis tools available to players, hitters have learned how to “golf” out a low pitch, especially when a left-handed batter faces a right-handed pitcher. “Pitching is about making adjustments,” he said.

Casey Crosby, a lefty hurler, made his MLB debut with the Detroit Tigers in 2012 and pitched this year with the Atlantic League’s Lancaster (Penn.) Barnstormers. Early on as a pro, he, too, tried to keep the ball down.

“Now I try to move the ball up and down more than side to side,” he said.

Orioles reliever Evan Phillips told USA Today he doesn’t use the allegedly juiced ball as an excuse.

“It’s just getting better players,” he said. “Kids are advancing a lot faster than they used to. These younger players are hitting the ball harder. You hit the ball harder, there’s more chances for homers. That’s starting to leak more into the big leagues, and we’re starting to see a new wave of talent.”

That includes budding stars like Biggio, who with 16 home runs this year is just 275 away from his Hall of Fame father’s career total.

“Here in the majors as a hitter you have to make an adjustment to knock it out,” the younger Biggio said. He figured that out quickly — and so, it seems, have many around him.