Baseball's Power Surge, Is It Coming To An End?

Simply put, a range of figures, individual, team, and league, suggests that the major leagues suffered or enjoyed a “power outage” in 2008. The Philadelphia Phillies’ Ryan Howard, pictured here hitting a home run in Game 4 of the 2008 World Series, topped the National League with 48. Adam Dunn, who split the season between the Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks, reached 40 for the fifth consecutive season. And all indications are that the retreat is likely to continue this year. Of course, the host of fans and media people disillusioned by what has been labeled the “steroid era” might insist that the drug shenanigans extending for a decade or so (1993-2005 approximately) was a “power outrage.”

Consider the uproar that ensued last February when New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez confessed he had resorted to performance-enhancing substances while with the Texas Rangers in 2001-03. Rodriguez admitted to using stimulants after signing a $250 million, 10-year contract that made him the game’s highest-paid player at the age of 25. Rodriguez did reach spectacular levels during his three seasons at Texas, averaging 52 home runs a year, with a peak of 57 in 2002, and winning the first of his 3 A.L. MVP Awards in 2003, when he hit 47.

No one would dispute Rodriguez’s avowal that his decision to rely on drugs was a colossal blunder, which may haunt him throughout the rest of his career and beyond. Sadly, many other players made the same mistake, if one can judge from the host of inflated statistics posted during a stretch from the mid-1990s into the first years of the 21st Century, as well as a continuing stream of revelations about offenders.

Happily for those who prefer their baseball “straight,” last season provided evidence that the prolonged surge in offense, particularly when it comes to home runs, is seemingly on the wane. There’s no shortage of reasons given by various sources as to why a downturn in home runs and power numbers, is taking hold. Some suggest the way pitchers are now being used is having an effect, or that the outfield dimensions of some newer ball parks are tougher on sluggers, and a few contend the baseball has been deadened by those who rule the game.

The “tampered” ball notion appealed to first baseman Mark Teixeira, now with the Yankees after splitting last season between the Braves and Angels for whom he hit a total of 33 homers. “It doesn’t seem the ball is jumping off the bat as much,” said Teixeira, pictured here. “I can feel the ball being a little softer. I can feel the seams being a little raised and the leather not being as tight.”

The most favored reason given for the power slide is that the players’ use of performance-enhancing drugs has been greatly reduced in the last several years. Players now have to rely solely on their natural physical talent rather than their attempts to enhance their performance with artificial and illegal stimulants. Major League Baseball began drug testing in 2002, and over the intervening years has stepped up the frequency of tests as well as introducing penalties, some severe, for violations of the anti-drug code. As a result, player productivity in general may be returning to the more customary levels of the pre-steroid era.

There are all sorts of speculation as to why the offensive part of the game is in apparent retreat, but Angels’ center fielder Torii Hunter prefers to attribute a decline to the crackdown against steroids. He said that the most likely reason for fewer home runs is that players are avoiding performance-boosting drugs. “I think the steroid testing has something to do with it,” said Hunter. “If there were any guys who were taking it, they’re not taking it any more. I’d say it’s a small percentage, but it’s still going to have an impact.”

Hunter’s cautiously-voiced opinion is probably right on the mark. In any case, there can be no doubt that hitters aren’t as successful as they used to be. One indication of the downturn is that home runs per game (by both leagues) in 2008 sank to 2.01, the lowest level in 15 seasons, since 1993 when the figure was 1.78. The peak was reached in 2000 when teams combined for 2.34 home runs per game.

Reinforcing the notion that matters are returning to normal is that far fewer players are hitting an extraordinary number of home runs in a season. Last year only two sluggers reached 40. Howard topped the National League with 48 and Dunn reached 40. No American Leaguer got to 40, and the 37 belted by the Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera was the lowest total for a league leader since Fred McGriff of the San Diego Padres paced the N.L. with 35 in 1992.

To emphasize the magnitude of decline, 16 players hit 40 or more home runs in 1996 and 2000, the peak years for that sort of offensive mayhem. Admittedly, home runs represent only part of an offensive picture. But other statistical components also experience a marked decrease in 2008. As in the American League, runs scored also diminished to below the usual range in figures for a National League leader last season. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez of the Florida Marlins led the N.L. with 125. It was the second lowest total in 14 seasons.

What’s most intriguing about this steep drop in home runs in the early 1990s is that it followed closely on the heels of a tremendous power surge which drove to its zenith in 1987. It certainly suggests that things can alter in a hurry, even in a game so resistant to change as baseball has always been.

Home run output in the American League reached 188.1 per team for the 1987 season, and 152 per team in the N.L. The next year it sank by 27.8 per cent in the A.L. to 135.8 home runs per team. In the N.L., the decline was slightly steeper, 29.9 percent, from 152 home runs per club to 106.6. The Cardinals as a team hit only 71 home runs in 1988, just one more than one of their players, Mark McGwire, was to produce 10 years later, and two fewer than Bonds set the current record with in 2001. That severe slump in long ball production after 1987 began one of the more remarkable and sudden declines in offensive production in the game’s history, certainly when it came to home runs, as the records of the 1992 and 1993 seasons surely prove.

Is the game on the verge of a similar – if probably not as radical – retreat from emphasis on power and non-scoring as suggested by last season’s modest statistics? Or, is the ongoing decline in generating offense a mere side effect of the closing stages of the pathetic era of dependence on performance-enhancing chemicals? Nobody can be sure. But it’s possible that pitchers may enjoy life more in the next year or two, even if batters have less fun.

For generations, Opening Day has arrived amid pageantry. In Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the sport’s first professional team, an annual parade marks an unofficial “city holiday” with young and old alike taking the day off to cheer on the Reds. For decades, the first pitch of every major league season officially took place in Cincinnati. Pictured here are Opening Day introductions at Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, on April 2, 2007.

The past decade, however, has brought the introduction of a Sunday night opening game televised by ESPN, as well as the staging of season-opening series in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Japan, with the current World Series champion as the “home” team against an opponent in the same league. The ensuing Monday brings Opening Day to numerous major league ballparks and the game that day in Cincinnati (the only team that always opens the season at home) is still observed throughout baseball as the “traditional opener.” Opening Day is a state of mind as well, with countless baseball fans known to recognize this unofficial holiday as a good reason to call in sick at work or “play hooky” from school and go out to the ballpark for the first of 162 regular season games. Each team’s home opener serve as the only regular season games during the year in which the entire rosters of both teams as well as coaches and clubhouse staff are introduced to the crowd (for the rest of the year, ballparks only introduce the starting lineups).

Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn, who played for the Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox, once said: “An opener is not like any other game. There’s that little extra excitement, a faster beating of the heart. You have that anxiety to get off to a good start, for yourself and for the team. You know that when you win the first one, you can’t lose ‘em all.”

Opening Day extends throughout the sport of baseball, to hundreds of minor league baseball franchises as well as to college, high school, youth league fields and in areas far beyond North America. Similarly, there are opening-night performances for new Broadway plays.

Prior to Opening Day, the teams’ managers have to decide the starting pitchers for the Opening Day game. This spot is usually given to the teams’ ace pitchers, and is usually considered an honor for a pitcher to start on Opening Day. In turn, the pitchers who start on Opening Day are usually recognized throughout the baseball world as their teams’ best starting pitchers.

History of Opening Day There is a rich history of special events that have occurred on Opening Day, most notably a 1940 no-hitter thrown by Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller, ultimately a Hall of Famer. It remains the only no-hitter in Opening Day history.

Opening Day has been synonymous with United States presidents as well. On April 14, 1910, baseball enthusiast William Howard Taft attended the home opener in Washington D.C., becoming the first U.S. President to throw out the first pitch to start a season. President Woodrow Wilson pictured here throws out the ceremonial first pitch on opening day in 1916. Eleven sitting U.S. presidents have done the same since then. One standout, Harry S. Truman, showcased his ambidextrous talent when he threw out ceremonial first pitches with both his right and left arm in 1950. On April 4, 1994, Bill Clinton inaugurated the Cleveland Indians’ new ballpark, Jacobs Field, with the first pitch.

The great Ted Williams was a .449 hitter in openers, with three home runs and fourteen runs batted in during fourteen such games. Williams also boasted at least one hit in every Opening Day game in which he appeared. On April 4, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves ignited the Opening Day crowd in Cincinnati with his first swing. It resulted in his 714th career home run, tying Babe Ruth on Major League Baseball’s all-time list. Aaron would finish his career with 755 homers.

Hall of Famer Walter Johnson was arguably the greatest ballplayer in Opening Day history. In 14 season openers for the Washington Senators, the “Big Train” pitched a record nine shutouts. His two most famous starts include a 3-0 victory over the Philadelphia A’s in 1910 and a 1-0 marathon victory while battling the A’s Eddie Rommel for 15 innings.

The St. Louis Cardinals were the first major league team to open the season with a night game, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-2 on April 18, 1950. Hall of Famer Tom Seaver has started the most Opening Day games in Major League history, starting the Opener 16 times for the New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago White Sox.

Photographs from Wikipedia.org/Foundation, Inc.

The American game, for better or for worse, has moved to lavish new stadiums and supports lucrative player contracts. It is built on power and entertainment: a deadly combination, we’ve discovered, in an era of performance-enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, nations like Japan and South Korea have learned our game, digested it and improved upon it by going back to the basics. “The world has caught up with us,” said Major League vice president Bob Watson after Sunday’s loss.

In a span of nine years, teams like Japan and South Korea have, indeed, caught up and, some say, passed the United States in international competition. “Until we get the commitment from the players and owners to be involved in this 100 percent, we’re going to find that it’s going to be a struggle.”

Until the United States lost, most of the conversation in the tournament had focused on how to improve the tournament itself. The most popular suggestion was to compress it and reduce the down time. “There’s a reason why the game is played every day,” shortstop Derek Jeter said. “Everyone would tell you the same thing: you get in shape but more importantly you get into a rhythm offensively, defensively, on the bases. I don’t know how it could happen, but it would be an ideal situation to play every day.”

For Team USA, the concern goes further. How can the United States, with all of its major league stars, win it? This is a challenge for the nation: how to identify, nurture and develop homegrown talent. How to teach the basics? Jeter marveled at the speed with which the Japanese hitters, like Ichiro Suzuki, raced down the line after they put the ball in play. “They don’t strike out,” he said. “Everybody puts the ball in play. They all run. The left-handers are halfway down the line when they put the ball in play. If I could do it or teach it, I would.”

At the same time, Jeter was not ready to concede that American baseball had slipped into oblivion. “I wouldn’t go around calling it someone else’s game just because we lost a game tonight,” he said.

Manager Davey Johnson also dismissed the notion that the United States’ loss was a referendum on the quality of baseball in the country. He pointed out that Japan’s training schedule, which began in December, gave the team a head start. “It’s just one game,” said Johnson. “Some of our pitchers aren’t as far along as some of the Japanese pitchers. It does give them a head start when you play them in early March, but all in all we put on a good show and we could have won this game.”

Major League Baseball continues to represent the best baseball has to offer, largely because great players from Asia, Central America, South America and North America compete on major league rosters. The problem the World Baseball Classic underlined is, what happens to the United States when major-leaguers return to their countries to play?

And that raises a more troubling question: Did the United States lose a semifinal game on Sunday? Or, have we lost the game itself.

Photograph by Koji Sasahara, The Associated Press

Editorial by Don Weiskopf, Publisher, Baseball Play America:

Pre-Game Infield Practice and the Pepper Game Traditionally, Japanese teams take infield practice before every game. Major league teams have not taken pre-game infield practice for a couple of decades, when I took the picture below at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Like Asian teams have always done, the infield drill just before the game should be reinstated by every team. Likewise, the game of pepper, so valuable in fielding and conditioning, was banned many years ago. This pepper game scene that I photographed of Gary Lavelle and his Giants team mates should return as a pre-game warm-up, along with playing catch.

Use Two Hands in Fielding Ball Whenever Possible In recent years, the big glove and other factors have resulted in a significant increase in one-hand fielding. A one-hand catch slows down the process of throwing and making the next play. Too often today, a one-handed fielding effort is a liability and the hitter beats the throw or the base runner takes an extra base. When a quick and strong throw is required, the fielder should move into a good throwing position, catch the ball with both hands, and get his throw away quickly.

In a sport where speed and split seconds of time often determine success or failure, fielders today are wasting critical time as they catch the ball with one hand and attempt to get their throws away quickly. Fielders are experiencing difficulty getting the ball out of their big gloves, and they are slow moving into throwing position. Pictured here is Mike Cameron using two hands, and Willy Taveras catching the ball with one hand.

In my February 1982 cover article in Athletic Journal, “Fielding: One-Handed or Two?”, I conducted a comparative study of a player’s fielding time using one hand and the two hand technique. Using a sequence-series camera, the number of pictures I took of outfielder Dave Bergman fielding the ball one-handed was 34, compared to only 26 pictures when catching the ball with two hands. Conclusion: Much more time is required in fielding the ball with one hand.

Photographs by Don Weiskopf, Charlie Riedel and Tony Dejak, The Associated Press

Rodriguez took the blame, and did so in a lengthy interview on ESPN on February 9. He told the interviewer, Peter Gammons, “When I arrived at Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day. I was young. I was stupid. I was naďve. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. I did take a banned substance, and for that I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”

Rodriguez stressed that he has not used performance enhancers after joining the Yankees. His failed test came in 2003, the first year baseball tested for drugs, that testing that year was done on a survey basis, without any penalties, and the results were supposed to be anonymous.

But in April 2004, federal agents seized all of the positive urine samples from the 2003 testing as part of their investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. On February 7, SI.com, the Web site of Sports Illustrated, reported that Rodriguez’s 2003 sample was one of those that were seized.

The careers of Bonds and Clemens have been similarly tarnished, though both differ from Rodriguez because of their denials. Bonds has been indicted on perjury charges stemming from his testimony before the Balco grand jury in 2003; Clemens is now under investigation for perjury in connection with his testimony before Congress last February.

Rodriguez is not subject to suspension by baseball, because he failed his test before punishments were enacted. Nor does he appear to be in any legal trouble. Baseball enacted drug-testing penalties in 2004, and since then, under guidelines that have been toughened several times, he has likely been tested at least seven times. In this period, he has never been linked to a positive test.

Rodriguez averaged 52 homers a season with the Rangers, including his career high 57, in 2002. As a Yankee, he has averaged 46 home runs a season, with a high of 54 in 2007. Rodriguez was named the American League’s most valuable player in 2003, 2005 and 2007. The Yankees are paying Rodriguez an average of $27.5 million per season through 2017, the highest salary in baseball. The contract also includes $30 million in bonuses tied to Rodriguez’s pursuit of Bonds’ record 762 home runs.

Rodriguez is hardly alone in lying to the news media about drug use. Giambi denied using steroids until the leak of his grand jury testimony in 2004, and Pettitte claimed to be clean of drug use until he was named in the Mitchell report in 2007.

Rodriguez pledged to educate children on the ills of drug use, but McGwire did the same thing before Congress in 2005 and has lived in seclusion since. Even after his interview, Rodriguez’s sincerity was being questioned.

“He claims to be sorry that he used hard-core steroids, but it is obvious he is only sorry that he got caught,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. “If he was truly sorry, he would have admitted it in advance and not have provided a stone-faced denial to Katie Couric and the American public in 2007,” Tygart added.

Somehow, I think that baseball would’ve been more effective getting its point across if Presinal were, say, a known gambler or – better yet, someone like the commissioner, in his infallible interpretation of the “best interests” clause – deemed a more classical type of “unsavory character.” All of a sudden, this guy wanted me to believe that Selig was powerless. But I remember when baseball told players to stay away from the unsavory types.

So I do a conference call with two of Selig’s ranking PR guys and Rob Manfred, his executive vice president for labor relations. Manfred argued vociferously but he still couldn’t explain away the central question: Why Presinal – a guy who should’ve been gone seven years ago – remains a major player with major league players. I remind him that just a year ago the general manager of the New York Mets – Omar Minaya –called Presinal a “highly, highly respected” figure.

So how effective could that clubhouse ban have been? In 2001, Presinal was detained with steroids in Canada. He told authorities that they were for former Indians and Rangers slugger, Juan Gonzalez. The commissioner’s office said it would investigate the matter. But according to the Mitchell Report, “There is no evidence that such an investigation ever was conducted beyond a search for Presinal’s Cleveland address.”

More, from page 97 of the report: “None of the eye witnesses whom we interviewed during the course of our investigation was contacted by anyone about the incident until a news report about it appeared in July 2006.” That would have been a New York Daily News exclusive of July 30. Not coincidentally, it was also the Daily News that reported on Presinal’s involvement with Alex Rodriguez. Now everybody wants A-Rod to come clean. But what about Selig? He’s like Rodriguez; he comes clean only after these matters become public. Still, given his “I-wouldn’t do-anything-different” bit, I wonder if he’ll ever really fess up.

Manfred is still scolding me – “You’re reading a little too much into the sentence in the Mitchell Report,” – when I see a story cross the wire: Fehr on steroid issue: ‘We fixed the problem.’ Now all I could think was, how much did Selig pay this numbnuts, Donald Fehr? No matter what comes out of Selig’s mouth, Fehr will say something even more stupid and arrogant.

Even as he continued to lecture me, Manfred seemed blind to his own good fortune. The A-Rod test result – one of 104 such positive readings from 2003 – was supposed to be confidential. One way or another, the union screwed up monumentally, failing to protect its members. Fehr’s lieutenant, Gene Orza, may or may not have tipped off his own guys. For the first time in memory, the players association has made itself vulnerable – not just to the commissioner, but to its own rank and file.

On Monday, Fehr was quoted: “We fixed the problem and we need to look forward, as Bud has said many times.”

Finally, something the commissioner and the union can agree on – their own arrogant proclamations. The problem has now been “fixed.” Hip, hip, hooray. There’s a testing system in place. And if the history of performance-enhancing drugs has taught us anything, it’s that guys will stop cheating just as soon as there’s a system in place. Keep up the good work, fellas.

I really have to wonder about Angel Presinal’s qualifications as a purveyor of illicit substances that build freakishly lean muscle mass. Remember, this is the guy who worked with Bartolo Colon. Blaming your cousin? Obviously, A-Rod has no sense of baseball tradition. The “cousin” used to be the girl you took on the road. Now it’s your needle man. Really, is nothing sacred?

Also, I loved when A-Rod said it would’ve worked out better for him if only he had gone to college and been allowed to mature. You know, like Bonds, at Arizona State. Or Clemens, who acquired wisdom at the University of Texas. Anyone get the feeling that Manny just doesn’t feel like going to camp?