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Funny thing about the great increase in homeruns this season

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Topnotchsy

Featured Contributor, The best players in history?
Aug 7, 2008
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The increase in number of home runs hit this season is well documented, but one thing that has been pretty interesting is that unlike back in the late 90's and early 2000's, the homeruns are spread much more widely. So while there are more players than ever before hitting 10 and 20 homeruns, we do not see nearly as much at the top. Sure Stanton is pushing 60, but he's currently 20 homeruns ahead of the Cody Bellinger, who is second in the NL with 39 homeruns.

We still have a few more games left, so the list may change for this year, but here's the number of players in the Majors with 40 or more homers by season:

2000 - 16
2001 - 12
2002 - 8
2003 - 10
2004 - 9
2005 - 9
2006 - 11
2007 - 5
2008 - 2
2009 - 5
2010 - 2
2011 - 2
2012 - 6
2013 - 2
2014 - 1
2015 - 9
2016 - 8
2017 - 4
 
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bigunitcards

Member
Sep 8, 2013
654
0
OKC, OK
Well wouldn't you say that that the previous homerun surge was due to individuals using banned & unbanned substances that gave a handful of players amazing strength & HR range. While this year appears to be more that the balls are being made differently, and deep triples are now carrying those few extra yards, meaning just a percentage increase across the board.
 

Topnotchsy

Featured Contributor, The best players in history?
Aug 7, 2008
9,446
170
Well wouldn't you say that that the previous homerun surge was due to individuals using banned & unbanned substances that gave a handful of players amazing strength & HR range. While this year appears to be more that the balls are being made differently, and deep triples are now carrying those few extra yards, meaning just a percentage increase across the board.

For sure, I would have thought that many of the 30-35 homer guys would have become 40 homer guys. Last year there were 38 players with 30 or more homers. This season there are 41. Last year there were 111 players with 20 or more. This year 118.

Looking at total number maybe the key point is that homeruns were up a ton last year, from under 5000 to 5600. This year that has continued to over 6000....
 

RStadlerASU22

Active member
Jan 2, 2013
8,881
11
Yes, I agreed it is surprising that there hasn't been a jump from levels, meaning 20 hrs getting to 30, 30 to 40 jumps etc. It seems that there are just a lot more people hitting 10-20 type ranges to get the overall bumps in total.

Ryan
Will Clark / Mike Brown Collector
 

death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
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The Carolina on the Southern side
This trend actually gives more credence to the juiced ball theory although, personally, I'm not sold on the idea because people cry juiced ball every there is a large spike in home runs across the league (late 80's, early 00's come to mind). It was the 2nd half of 2015 when critics shouted juiced ball but if that were true there would have been an immediate spike that would have leveled out but instead it has been slowly increasing since 2014. Sure, there is evidence the ball being used in 2017 has slightly different dimensions (or whatever you want to call it) than the balls being used five years ago (but the same as last years ball) but there is nothing conclusive enough to say that the HR spike is all due to the ball being used.

This is the first time in 10 years we've had two players hit 50+ HR
 

Austin

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
5,706
41
Dallas, Texas
Well wouldn't you say that that the previous homerun surge was due to individuals using banned & unbanned substances that gave a handful of players amazing strength & HR range. While this year appears to be more that the balls are being made differently, and deep triples are now carrying those few extra yards, meaning just a percentage increase across the board.
Exactly.
 

Jjoey52

Member
Feb 12, 2017
80
0
Could some players have figured out how to beat the tests?


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BBCgalaxee

Well-known member
Sep 9, 2011
6,475
59
So let's just say Stanton has 60.

I believe that would make him the sixth player to do so.

Two of them legit and three tainted.

Which group does stanton belong to?

I think legit as was always a monster but ya never know.

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Austin

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
5,706
41
Dallas, Texas
So let's just say Stanton has 60.

I believe that would make him the sixth player to do so.

Two of them legit and three tainted.

Which group does stanton belong to?

I think legit as was always a monster but ya never know.[
I think he's clean and has always been a potential 50-homer guy but he got hurt every year.
This year he's healthy and had a crazy hot month-plus long streak this season that gave him a chance at 60 homers.

Of course, I thought ARod was clean too. And then you see little guys like Dee Gordon being busted for PEDs, so you never know anymore.
 
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death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
0
The Carolina on the Southern side
I wouldn't be surprised to find out anyone (insert name here) was using PED's these days so I just assume clean until proven dirty.

As for Stanton, it's not as if there was a sudden surge in power this year. He was always going to become a 50-HR guy, it was just a matter of whether or not he could stay healthy for an entire season. Back in 2015 (at age 25) he had roughly the same HR per at-bat rate but was limited to only 74 games (due to injury). Last year was just an unusual down year for him.
 

rsmath

Active member
Nov 8, 2008
6,086
1
Could some players have figured out how to beat the tests?

Absolutely! I think the dopers are able to keep ahead of the sports testing labs. That's why I was saying in another thread it would be interesting to keep a Judge A and B sample (and maybe Stanton and others who had a lot of HR's this year) and test them in 10 years to see if they are clean or had substances that the sports testing labs eventually found a test for.

BTW, does anyone know if the NL broke their all-time single season homer record. I know the AL (and MLB as a total) was past their all-time single season homer record when Judge hit his 50th but the NL was a few homers short at the time.
 

MisterT

Well-known member
Mar 7, 2011
2,609
36
Virginia
What is most interesting to me about this is that it is happening at the same time pitchers are throwing harder and harder. One of the broadcasts I was listening to commented that they had never seen so many guys in the high 90's and over 100 on nearly every team (I don't have the stats to back this up, just the comments from the broadcasters). Now, you can read this a few ways...

1. Pitchers are throwing the ball harder so guys are hitting it farther.
2. Pitchers and hitters are both benefiting from the juiced ball.
3. Pitchers and hitters are both juicing and both are upping their games.
4. Guys are stronger than ever (for clean reasons) and we are seeing that strength spread across more hitters and pitchers.
5. Who knows what else...

For me, it does not make sense to talk about the widespread increase in HR's (not talking about the outliers here like Judge and Stanton) without also looking at the change in the pitch velocity. Clearly this also helps explain why strike outs are also up across the board. I want to believe that we are seeing the impact of stronger players with better training causing the ball to head towards and away from home plate at unprecedented speeds and by a large number of players.

But, maybe I am naive and there is a juice out there (in the ball or the players) that has not yet been detected by either MLB at large or by the Red Sox training staff as they cannot seem to find any home run mojo this year.
 

corockies

New member
Mar 23, 2013
1,213
0
Colorado
Stanton and Judge are both large humans. Stanton is 6'6" 246 lbs, Judge 6'7" 282 lbs. Just the raw power able to be generated from those big frames is an advantage.
 

Topnotchsy

Featured Contributor, The best players in history?
Aug 7, 2008
9,446
170
What is most interesting to me about this is that it is happening at the same time pitchers are throwing harder and harder. One of the broadcasts I was listening to commented that they had never seen so many guys in the high 90's and over 100 on nearly every team (I don't have the stats to back this up, just the comments from the broadcasters). Now, you can read this a few ways...

1. Pitchers are throwing the ball harder so guys are hitting it farther.
2. Pitchers and hitters are both benefiting from the juiced ball.
3. Pitchers and hitters are both juicing and both are upping their games.
4. Guys are stronger than ever (for clean reasons) and we are seeing that strength spread across more hitters and pitchers.
5. Who knows what else...

For me, it does not make sense to talk about the widespread increase in HR's (not talking about the outliers here like Judge and Stanton) without also looking at the change in the pitch velocity. Clearly this also helps explain why strike outs are also up across the board. I want to believe that we are seeing the impact of stronger players with better training causing the ball to head towards and away from home plate at unprecedented speeds and by a large number of players.

But, maybe I am naive and there is a juice out there (in the ball or the players) that has not yet been detected by either MLB at large or by the Red Sox training staff as they cannot seem to find any home run mojo this year.

Lol at your last line. (Rest of the post was interesting as well...)


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