With all the focus on harder, bouncier, more tightly-wound baseballs and how they’ve led to a massive spike in home runs, the All-Star Game reminded us of the other hot trend in the game.
Strikeouts.
Thirty-nine of the best hitters in the game (sorry, D.J. LeMahieu, but your services were deemed insufficient to needs) gathered in Miami to strike out 23 times, making nearly 40 percent of the outs in a 2-1 extra-inning win for the American League that successfully avoided drama or memorable moments.
And while most All-Star Games are like it in that they tend to be forgotten almost immediately, this one stood as a shiny beacon to the other half of the new baseball – the three true outcomes and a lot of walking back and forth.
It may be why more people spent more time talking about the Home Run Derby, which isn’t baseball, than the game, which is closer to its sport than any other All-Star game is to its. If home runs are the pinnacle of the sport’s enjoyment, the backhand is the strikeout. This year is on pace to produce a record number of homers (6126) and strikeouts (40,026), which is a lot of time spent watching trots or walks.
And it explains the San Francisco Giants, a team so bereft of entertainment value that executive vice-president/chief brainbox Brian Sabean described it to the San Jose Mercury News’ Andrew Baggarly in varying ways as “a huge disappointment,” “total ineptitude,” “Poor performance and in some cases even beyond (poor),” “we’ve flatlined,” and “it’s as if we’ve forgotten how to win.”
They are on a pace to be an average hitting home run team – for them, anyway – but they are also on the verge of breaking 1,200 strikeouts for just the second time in franchise history. This is not unusual, either – they have been a high strikeout team for two decades in comparison to their fellow National League teams, and a low homer team for the past 12 years.
In that way, they are bucking the admirable trend in baseball while holding fast to the unpleasant one, and while that may not be as granular an explanation for some people’s likings, it explains much. The Giants don’t hit homers and they do strike out a ton.
Now who can’t like that ratio?
More to the point, though, one wonders if this bend toward no action across an entire sport is sustainable. Every other time offense has stagnated, the ball has received a structural goosing – or the players have. It’s as if the people who give us baseball understand that fans prefer watching their athletes do athletic things more often than the fraction of a second it takes to propel a home run, but the math says they shouldn’t believe it.
It is also, in an insidious way, why people are racing to declare Yankee Aaron Judge the new “face of baseball” based on a brilliant half-season, a Home Run Derby title and playing in New York. He has many of the same interviewing mannerisms of Stephen Curry, while being massive and powerful at the right moment.
Now our fixation with “the face of” sports figures speaks to our general laziness, ignorance and subconscious desire to work in Marketing, but if Aaron Judge is the face if baseball (and we have no objection to this, even though it is our not our place to care one way or another), he will be the player of our times – 59 homers, 202 strikeouts, 47 percent of his at-bats being decided either by the catcher or by a fan in the left field seats.
And the Giants? Well, they won’t be, because nobody hits a lot of homers without a lot of strikeouts, but some teams strike out a lot without hitting homers. And you know what people say about them?
“A huge disappointment.” “Total ineptitude.” “Poor performance and in some cases even beyond (poor).” “We’ve flatlined.” And “it’s as if we’ve forgotten how to win.”
Now THERE’S a cover for the 2018 media guide. Right next to Lou Seal scaring an infant.
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