Thursday, July 04, 2002
Home runs are down despite record day
By Tom Groeschen tgroeschen@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
On the mightiest slugging night in baseball history, the Reds contributed one home run.
It was a large one, a yellow-seat shot to right field by Adam Dunn. And Wednesday, a day after major-league teams hit a record 62 home runs, the Reds were surprised to learn they were a (small) part of baseball history.
“Is that right?” said Dunn, the Reds' lone All-Star. “I'm sure the heat has something to do with the ball carrying so well.”
It was 95 degrees at the start of Tuesday's game, during which Houston's Lance Berkman hit two homers and Dunn one at Cinergy Field.
But in a year when baseball home runs have dropped from last year's pace, it has been a relatively average power year at Cinergy. Entering Wednesday night's game, the Reds had hit 37 home runs at home this year, which put them on pace for 75. The Reds have averaged 69.7 home runs per season at Riverfront/Cinergy in non-strike years since 1971, the park's first full season. Opponents have averaged 70.6 homers there in the same span.
The biggest home run year at Cinergy was 1999, when the Reds (97 homers) and opponents (116) combined for 213. Last year there were 190 homers at Cinergy (83 by the Reds, 107 by opponents).
Wednesday, the Elias Sports Bureau said major-league home runs have dropped from an average of 2.25 per game last year to 2.04 this year. That includes Tuesday night's record outburst, which featured a combined 12 home runs by Detroit and the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. There were 10 total homers hit at Colorado's Coors Field by the Giants and Rockies.
The previous record of 57 homers in one day was set April7, 2000.
Yet, after the recent power surge that has seen Barry Bonds hit 73 homers in one year, Mark McGwire 70 and Sammy Sosa topping 60, the power outage of 2002 has been a head-scratcher.
Theories are abundant. The ball's not as lively, the strike zone has shrunk, the weather was cold early in the season. There's the new humidor where they're storing balls in Colorado.
But once the balls start jumping again in summer, the other side comes out: The players are bulked up, the pitching's awful, the parks are bandboxes, etc.
Cinergy generally has been considered a hitter's park. But with huge chunks of the outfield seating removed for construction of Great American Ball Park, one school of thought is that the winds swirl into play more than when the park was enclosed.
“I've seen balls I've hit into the gaps that have just died,” shortstop Barry Larkin said. “But that may be because of the way I'm hitting (.234). Really, I haven't seen a big difference.”
Dunn, tied with Juan Encarnacion for the Reds' home run lead with 16, said the park has killed some would-be homers since he arrived last July.
“I don't think this is really a good hitter's park,” Dunn said. “The ball carries well down the lines but not in the gaps. I remember some balls last year that were just crushed, and they just died.”
Reds radio broadcaster Marty Brennaman, in his 29th year calling game at Cinergy, doesn't think the new stadium configuration has changed things.
“This place has always been a launching pad,” Brennaman said. “They talked about places like Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium, but this place was always right up there with them.”
Brennaman said the winds, to this day, are usually little factor here.
“If anything, the wind blows in here, hits the seats and then blows back out to the outfield,” he said. “That's how it is at Pac Bell in San Francisco, too. And now that it's hot and humid, you naturally see more balls carrying out. It's hot and humid all over right now.”
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Home runs are down despite record day
