aaron judge needs his own thread

I just checked. He has a .699 OPS on the season with two strikes - so I have no idea why they starting acting like they’re too shy to ask strike three to the dance all of the sudden.

Mandatory “Judge is unreal,” but …

I’m fascinated by the number of articles written on the premise that Judge isn’t using PEDs. I don’t know whether he is or isn’t but I do know I wouldn’t trust MLB’s drug testing program that much to a frame a story like that.

And please don’t read that as a sly defense of Bonds or whoever. It isn’t.

Long Judge piece by Robert Christgau of Fangraphs:

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/awaiting-62?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Judge will probably get two more home runs this season by accident so I think 62 or more is happening.

Bill James is crazy w that opinion upthread which isn’t to say this single season couldn’t be easily argued as the best he’s witnessed.

wow that’s a sentence i never thought i’d read.

xpost

#61

61 years since 61.

Aaron Judge has written his name alongside Roger Maris in baseball's record books. pic.twitter.com/1V4Gums34C

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 29, 2022

Generic lefty with one man on base = that secret sauce

angry some random torontonian won't be able to sell it for $3 million

So who was on the phone in the next room trying to get a lost debit card locked?

Was that the longest gap between home runs this season for him?

Nine games.

I find it interesting that people still make such a big deal about "league records" after 25 years of interleague play and the universal DH, not to mention that players jump between leagues all the time now.

journalists make a big deal out of it because it gives them something to write about, absolutely no one else cares

?? 37,000 people were screaming their heads off last night when Judge tied--not even broke--the record. Were they all journalists? (Not to mention that that this particular league record, whether you agree or not, takes on added significance.)

well you've answered your own question - it's because it was maris, the fabled mark of 61, another yankee. you know how many people discount bonds (and mcgwire and sosa) - in their minds 61 is still the real mark. plus those other guys weren't yankees so they don't really count lol

absolutely zero to do with 'the AL record'

Roger Maris Jr. owns a sports apparel store called 61 Outfitters that according to his LinkedIn was "created for hunters and fishermen who strive to Bag, Catch and Be the Best."

— Bradford William Davis (@BWDBWDBWD) September 29, 2022

Okay. I'd like to put that to the test with another league record as prominent as the HR record, but I don't think there are any other categories as prominent.

I think if any of McGwire, Bonds or Sosa were in the HoF (that is, if it weren’t for their association with PEDs) then that would be the big number (73, 70, or 66) Judge would be looking to break. Many people (including me) care more about 61. I agree that any hysteria around it has little to do with it being a league record.

In other words, if Maris would have hit 61 in the National League rather than in the AL, his 61 would still be the big number for Judge to eclipse (in the minds of people like me).

Possibly feel like I’m just saying what everyone else is saying but also I just woke up

(I think bonds 73 is the record in the same way that if a pitcher set an ERA record during the 2020 pandemic season, that would also be a record. It would count, and yet most people would want to see it broken under normal circumstances)

I think of 60+ HR as more of a neat thing like the 50/50 in hockey

I think Bieber and Bauer both set records during the pandemic season that most people either discount or aren't even aware of.

Got my head around what I wanted to say. I think you're 99% right about league records, with one exception: the A.L. home run record. Even if steroids had never existed, and Bonds and the rest had done what they did, I still think the A.L. HR record would be a big deal because of its association first with Ruth, and then with the fabled/sad Maris/Mantle story. And Judge's stature will, I think, add to that. Otherwise, I agree, no one much cares about league records.

you really think that if it was jose canseco hitting 65 ‘roided home runs for the a’s it would be a different story?

I'm trying to look at this in the absence of steroids, which complicate everything; in such a world, yes, I think the A.L. HR record would still resonate.

I'd extend that to the career record, too; if Mike Trout were to ever approach 714 HR (probably unreachable by now), I think it would be a very big deal.

ruth only hit 708 in the AL, which is among the reasons it makes even less sense to divide career records by league

60+ homers is/was incredibly rare for 100s of years of baseball history except during a brief blip in the late 90s/early 00s (what could've possibly caused that blip?).

it's a very cool achievement, and i find it funny that all of the "baseball can't market its talent" people are all of a sudden grumpy because the person they're marketing is on the yankees

(xpost) Forgot about that...

hey I dislike the Yankees too but if someone on say the Marlins hit 60+ HRs I bet a lot of people wouldn't even hear about it

baseball fans would. random people probably not

well you've answered your own question - it's because it was maris, the fabled mark of 61, another yankee. you know how many people discount bonds (and mcgwire and sosa) - in their minds 61 is still the real mark. plus those other guys weren't yankees so they don't really count lol

absolutely zero to do with 'the AL record'

Totally OTM. It's one thing to not vote Bonds for the HOF because of various reasons, it's another thing to pretend those 60 and 70 HR seasons never existed. Making up a new mystique around the "AL record" gives people a pretext to discount McGwire, Sosa, and co. while getting to witness history in 2022.

I'm trying to look at this in the absence of steroids, which complicate everything; in such a world, yes, I think the A.L. HR record would still resonate

I think this is mixing cause and effect. The record resonates for some because it gives them an excuse to ignore the actual HR record.

If McGwire had hit 59 HR in 1998, ESPN wouldn't have produced documentaries twenty years later about the season when he broke Hack Wilson's hallowed NL record. It was all about Ruth and Maris.

As a kid following baseball just before the steroid era, I never thought of Ruth's or Maris's records as AL records. They were the single-season MLB home-run records.

But what I'm saying is, because of Ruth (mostly) and Maris/Mantle (partially), this is one league record that has lasting meaning that stands outside of steroids, the actual record, everything. As the saying goes, I think we will just have to agree to disagree here.

baseball fans would. random people probably not

― ciderpress, Thursday, September 29, 2022 12:54 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah that's what I mean. like people I work with who maybe couldn't name a single current baseball player know about this

hey I dislike the Yankees too but if someone on say the Marlins hit 60+ HRs I bet a lot of people wouldn't even hear about it

Was there any major media thirst over the Stanton quest for 60 a few years back? I feel like he sat on his final total of 59 for a couple games at the end of the season too. Most forgetting 50 HR guy this side of Greg Vaughn.

also this has been a real smokescreen for how badly the rest of the yankees lineup has been hitting

I was plugged in enough to know about Stanton but I don't think it got any attention outside of baseball media. Maybe Sportscenter did a segment or two about it. I actually remember thinking "huh, maybe 50 HRs isn't a big deal anymore"

it's still a big deal in that it's a target that doesn't get hit by anyone in the league a lot of years

I think Aaron Judge definitely fits the criteria of the fabled MVP candidate who carries his team to the postseason.

There was a little fanfare for stanton back then but it may have just been on the internet. It felt like way less of an inevitability though - judge reached 59 HR in 14 fewer games.

It was also the 2017 hitting environment where every team had at least 8 players who hit 30 homers so it may have registered as less of an individual achievement.

I do wonder what the narrative would be like if it were a famous player on a big market NL team this year, with the exact same offensive season as judge. Like if it were Harper or Betts reaching 55 with a full month left. They'd have to come up with something.

anyway real asterisk heads know that judge merely tied the *true* AL record of 60. ruth hit 60 in a 154-game season; judge didn't hit his 61st until game 155

I don't actually follow baseball anymore, but I have been following the Judge HR chase since I saw an article about it in the New York Times a few weeks ago. At the time I went to Baseball Reference to look at the single-season leaderboard and was astonished to see the Stanton 59-HR season on there, since I hadn't been aware of it when it happened (and Stanton himself is only vaguely familiar to me).

They'd have to come up with something.

they'd have to be more explicit about steroid-era records not *really* counting. this AL record stuff lets them elide that

Is there a parallel here with Rocket Richard's 50 goals in 50 games? That's been done a number of times now (5? 10?), and Gretzky scored 50 in many fewer. But Rocket Richard--maybe because he was first, and it was science-fiction-like when he did it--is still remembered for 50 in 50. Maybe when my generation of fans is dead, Ruth's 60 will be forgotten. But until then, I don't think so. One thing I'll never forget is the ending of Robert Creamer's chapter on the '27 season, with Ruth yelling "60! Let's see some son of a bitch top that!"

ruth is allowed to prorate his 60 to a current season length so the actual record is 63.12

ruth played before integration, though. don't think he'd have quite as many HRs if he was playing against all of the best pitchers.

this is why the true HR record can only be determined in a giant clean room cube, no wind, identical field for all players, 1,000 games played with all players rotating between teams for perfect equal competition. each "season epoch" will take 8 years

(xpost) That reminds me of some player in Ball Four (Danny Cater?) who was famous around the league (and ridiculed) for being able to calculate his batting average to four decimals as he ran down to first.

anyway real asterisk heads know that judge merely tied the *true* AL record of 60. ruth hit 60 in a 154-game season; judge didn't hit his 61st until game 155

― mookieproof, Thursday, September 29, 2022 2:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

judge has fewer plate appearances !!1!11

xp the room cube should be rotating too to spice things up a bit

And everyone should drink, smoke and whore as much as Ruth

Mike Greenburg is pretty much wrong on everything but I had the AM radio on eating lunch in my car a couple weeks ago and I wanted to hit him with a brick as he kept going on and on and on about how Judge deserved some more attention because Bonds was on 'roids. I kept thinking to myself the whole time, 'hey ahole Babe Ruth did not have to play against black or latin players' how about an asterisk for him too. Times change and the world moves on.