There were more high scoring games, and more home runs hit in Thursday night’s action. The Mets and Nationals set a home run record for Citi Field, combining for eight long balls as New York wins 9-7. The Rockies hit three home runs, two by Trevor Story, to blow out the Phillies 11-2. The Denver Post had a good story on the increase of home runs yesterday, and how the Rockies are swimming against the tide. Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell gives a good reason for the increase:
“What’s most noticeable to me now is the lack of contact,” Counsell said. “And because there’s this lack of contact, you’re not going to string together a lot of hits to score runs, so you better hit the ball out of the ballpark. Since it’s harder to put the ball in play, with pitchers throwing harder with better stuff, the home run has become instant offense that doesn’t require sequential offense.”
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale calls this “the height of the Three True Outcomes Era: home run, strikeout, walk.”
That was true in the 1950s as well, but with fewer strikeouts. Counsell gets it right, however; if batter put the ball in play infrequently, those hits have to do more damage.
The Rockies are trying to do damage both ways:
“We can still slug. But we have the ability to do some other things offensively now,” Colorado manager Walt Weiss said.
“We got derailed on this road trip offensively, for three or four games. But if you look at the big picture, and the overall body of work, we’ve shown we’re capable of scoring in different ways,” Weiss said. “We’re not living and dying on the home run like we have in the past.”
The Rockies are in the lower half of the NL in both walks and strikeouts (very close to the middle in both categories), so they are doing a decent job of putting the ball in play. That’s especially important in Coors Field, where the big outfield makes it easier for balls to drop in.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/29z9AVY
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