No one in baseball, including Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, isn’t aware of the spike in home runs throughout the first half of the 2016 season. However, given baseball’s recent history with performance enhancing drugs, one’s mind would be forgiven for wondering if PEDs had anything to do with the sudden rise in homers this season.
Manfred, addressing the state of baseball ahead of the 2016 All-Star Game in San Diego, doesn’t believe that to be the case at all, nor does he see changes made to the actual baseball being the culprit.
As he points out, MLB’s drug testing system is one of the most extensive in the sporting world today and has caught plenty of its players cheating since its institution.
“The increase in the number of home runs takes place against a different backdrop,” Manfred said in his annual All-Star Game session with the Baseball Writers Association of America. “Major League Baseball does 22,000 drug tests a year. The World Anti-Doping Agency says we have one of the best testing programs in the world, let alone in professional sports. Our investigative capacity in the area of performance-enhancing drugs is probably the best in the world. So I’m much less concerned that this is due to (PEDs).”
Manfred isn’t wrong to point that out, as the league’s joint drug testing agreement has caught 70 players testing positive for PEDs since January alone. It also has player support for even tougher penalties for those who do test positive, with names like Jeff Francoeur and Justin Verlander amongst the most prominent.
So, if it isn’t PEDs or ball changes, what does Manfred believe is at play for the spike in home run numbers?
He believes that better coaching and access to technology that improves hitting is to blame.
“We think it has to do with the way pitchers pitch and the way hitters are being taught to play the game. You’ve seen some unusual developments in terms of home run hitters being up in the lineup to get them more at-bats. So we think it has more to do with the game this time around, because we’re comfortable we’re doing everything we can on the performance-enhancing drugs front.”
MLB is averaging 1.16 home runs per game rate this season, just a shade off the high water mark of the steroid era (1.17 per game in 2000).
Some may refuse to believe natural talent is at play, along with better training and coaching techniques. It is equally hard to believe that in the era we live in, juicing is the primary reason we’ve seen this spike in dingers.
[ESPN]
