n Monday, May 1st,
Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies must have forgotten to turn his
calendar. Helton cracked three home runs in a 15-8 drubbing of the
Montreal Expos. You see, April and an astonishing 931 homers were in the
books. Maybe April was an aberration. Maybe the pitchers’ arms just
never warmed up. With total disregard to the plight of major league
pitchers, Helton and the rest of the MLB sluggers continue their assault
on pitchers and the record books.
The April home run sum shattered the previous mark of 826, set in April
of 1996. That’s a difference of 105. The new record comes out to an
average of 2.56 homers per game. Compare that to the paltry 1.38 homers
per contest back in April of 1968, the end of the last pitchers era. (The
league lowered the pitcher’s mound after 1968.).
Author’s note: I’m watching the Arizona Diamondbacks/Milwaukee
Brewers game, and they combined for three homers in the time it took for
this paragraph to be written. Good karma or bad?
The reasons for this explosion are outnumbered only by the arguments
that support or rebut them. Juiced baseballs, diluted pitching, dinky new
ballparks, muscle-bound hitters, and diminished strike zones comprise most
of the reasons. Through casual research and random hunch, I believe that
the latter three hold more merit than the first two.
If you’re interested, espn.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer penned a
wonderful column on the aforementioned theories. Since Rob has made a
pretty good case for the reasons behind the offensive eruption, I refer
you to his archived column on espn.com (published late last week, I
believe). For now, I’m gonna take a different perspective on this
subject.
Earlier in this column, I mentioned Todd Helton’s three-homer
performance to open this month. Some might read about such a feat with
unabashed amazement. There is no disputing that clouting three in one game
is a special (the asterisk being that he did it in Coors Field). What’s
apparent thus far in the 2000 season is that it’s becoming less unique.
Helton is already the third player to do so, joining Alex Rodriguez and
Kevin Elster.
The more often players plaster baseballs over the fences, the more my
attention turns towards those pitchers who have managed to avoid such
carnage. Check out these numbers:
Randy Johnson 6-0, 0.91 era
Pedro Martinez 5-0, 1.27
Tom Glavine 5.0, 1.80
Shane Reynolds 4-0, 3.35
Greg Maddux 4-0, 2.49
Scott Schoeneweis 4-0, 3.15
James Baldwin 4-0, 3.12
Granted, most of these names qualify for the Who’s Who list of
modern-day hurlers. Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez would
dominate under any circumstances. The point is, what these pitchers have
accomplished is remarkable given the offensive bang. This is why I thought
Pedro Martinez deserved the MVP award last season, but I won’t dig up
that issue now.
In your next baseball discussion, when somebody sings the praises of a
three-homer game or a seven- RBI game, just stare them in the face and
say: "Hitting a home run is like being the world’s tallest
midget." At the very least, you’ll prompt a snicker.
