http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/sports/baseball/home-run-records-are-in-sight-the-question-is-why.html 2016-09-22 18:43:40 Home Run Records Are in Sight. The Question Is Why. Explanations for the sudden rise in home runs include doping and a shift in strategy. === If you looked at the top of the home run leaderboard, the 2000 baseball season would not stick out as a particularly noteworthy one for home runs. Sammy Sosa led the majors with a relatively modest 50 homers after consecutive seasons in which he and Mark McGwire each hit more than 60. A year later, Barry Bonds surpassed both of them by hitting 73. What few people probably realized at the time was that 2000 would represent the high point for home runs in baseball history. That season, players combined to hit 5,693 of them, a record average of 1.17 per team per game. The power was widespread, with 47 batters belting 30 or more, which was also a record. But those records could fall this season. After a barrage of 37 home runs Wednesday, including another two by the Yankees’ phenom, Gary Sanchez, teams are matching that 1.17 home runs per game average, putting them on a pace to tie or surpass it. Fifty-one batters are within four home runs of 30 for the season or have surpassed that number. This season, unlike in 2000, it is doubtful that any player will reach 50. Mark Trumbo, the Baltimore Orioles slugger, leads the majors with 43, and his team has 10 games remaining. But the list of hitters at or near 30 is extensive and surprising. It includes unlikely players like shortstop Brad Miller of the Tampa Bay Rays (30 homers despite never having hit more than 11 in any previous major league season or more than 15 in any season in the minors); second baseman Rougned Odor of the Rangers (31 despite never having hit more than 16 in the majors or 11 in the minors) and third baseman Jake Lamb of the Arizona Diamondbacks (28 despite a career high of six in the majors and 15 in the minors). Even David Ortiz, at age 40, is providing some head-scratching power, hitting 36 home runs in what he says is his final season. No player has hit as many in his final season in the majors. How did the league go from a nadir of 0.86 home runs per team per game in 2014 — which was the lowest level since 1992 — to where it is now? One possibility is that players have continued to find ways to skirt antidoping protocols, despite the league’s efforts to strengthen them in recent years. (None of the players cited above, As demonstrated in many Olympic sports, which generally have the most stringent antidoping programs in the world, athletes are often undeterred by drug-testing programs. They adapt to new protocols and find a way around them, like computer hackers evading antivirus programs. Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and, before that, the baseball deputy who dealt directly with drug matters, addressed that issue at this season’s All-Star Game. The spike in home runs had already caught people’s attention. Manfred maintained that baseball now had a “different backdrop” than it used to because of a testing program that began in 2003 and has been toughened numerous times since. “Major League Baseball does 22,000 drug tests a year,” Manfred said. “The World Anti-Doping Agency says we have one of the best testing programs in the world, let alone in professional sports.” That may be true, but frequent testing does not always prevent widespread doping. Consider the 2012 London Olympics, hailed at the time by antidoping officials as the cleanest ever because several thousand drug tests were administered. Still, more than 30 athletes on performance-enhancing drugs managed to avoid testing positive. They were caught four years later, after Olympics officials retested some urine samples from the last two Summer Games. “I’d like to say guys aren’t cheating,” Stephen Vogt, the Oakland Athletics catcher, Another theory about why home run numbers are up is one that has circulated many times before: The baseballs are juiced. Manfred dismissed that notion, too, noting that the former baseball commissioner in Japan, Ryozo Kato, Baseball has not expanded recently, so the pitching pool has not been made thinner and thus more vulnerable to giving up long balls. Nor have new ballparks been suddenly introduced into the mix that would have altered the home run numbers significantly. There are, however, other explanations to consider. Baseball has generally moved away from slap hitters and toward an emphasis on power above all else. Pitchers, meanwhile, are throwing harder, although not always with precision. This all-or-nothing approach, on the part of both hitters and pitchers, could help explain why not just home runs are up, but strikeouts as well. It might also give a clue as to why, despite the increase in home runs, runs scored per game have not returned to pre-2007 levels. Back in 2000, when home runs were all the rage, offense across the board was peaking, with an average of 5.14 runs per team per game, the highest level of scoring since 1936 and the fourth highest mark in the modern era, which runs from 1901 to present. In contrast, this season’s home run surge has been accompanied by a runs-per-team-per-game figure of 4.48, which represents an increase from the previous six seasons but is not nearly back to the offensive levels the sport became accustomed to from 1994 to 2007. Jon Lester of the Chicago Cubs told The Times this season that he thought hitters were taking a different approach at the plate, looking to hit the ball out of the park. “I know our hitting coach wants you to hit the ball in the air,” he said. “There’s no slug on the ground. Guys are willing to take their punchouts to hit the ball in the air.” Vogt and other catchers at the All-Star Game told Kepner that the ball felt exactly the same as it did in the past, backing up Manfred’s contention that the makeup of the ball was not causing the surge in home runs. Whether the latest home run binge is a blip, a trend or something more lasting will be determined over the next several seasons. Whatever it is, a glaring example of the steroid era — the record 5,693 homers hit in 2000 — could be reproduced this season, a notion that seemed unthinkable just a few seasons ago.