We are drowning in the dingers

The home run that marked the history of baseball was a great day of work. Of course, it was a great moment in the match: breaking a tie in the seventh inning to give the Orioles a 5-2 lead over the Dodgers. But this match does not really matter for either team, and Jonathan Villar's striker – the MLB's 6.106th win of the season, breaking the old record with many games to play – could not to stop being pedestrian According to a strict definition, the more circuits there are, the less they are rare and special. That's how Villar's strike – the bat for which we're heading for Cooperstown – was, for a time, the most unusual homer of all time. Until this title is usurped by each of the next 19 strikes that were marked during the rest of the night.

In 2011, 6,125 home runs were affected. This number only makes sense if you use it for comparison purposes. For example, before the previous record was set in 2017, no year had seen more than 5,693 dingers (2000). And there are still 18 days of games left. According to ESPN Stats and Research, there were 661 more homeruns on September 11 compared to previous seasons.

If the rough numbers are overwhelming and incomprehensible, like the non-Euclidean geometry of some Lovecraft horrors, what is more striking is the way the surge has manifested itself at the team level and over shorter periods.

• The record of the home run of a season for the team was beaten. August 31st.
• The record of a season of home runs abandoned by a team was defeated. August 22
• Sixteen – most! – MLB teams are about to break franchise records in hometown circuits.
• Twenty-three teams are on the pace of its 200 circuits as a club, destroying the old record of 17.
• In May, the MLB recorded the highest number of home runs during its calendar month. Until this brand is broken in June. And put again in August.
• The Yankees set the circuit record of a club during a calendar month reaching 74 in August. No team hit more than 58 in a month.
• This season, the clubs have set all-time MLB records for most consecutive games with a starting circuit (Mariners, 20) and most consecutive league games (Yankees, 31).

It is no longer a question of knowing what caused this. Are the players in a hurry? Of course, probably a lot of them. But the DCs are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain these insane numbers. It's the ball, it's the whole ball and nothing but the ball.

The seams of the 2019 MLB baseball are shallower, giving batterers the double advantage of making handling more difficult for throwers and flying further when hit. You can, like Justin Verlander, admit the conspiracy theory that the league does it on purpose to make the offensive worse – it's curious to see how MLB bought a stake in Rawlings last year, in order to have a " contribution and direction "in the manufacture of baseballs – but this ultimately does not matter. The ball is different and the effects are amazing.

The best proof of the role of the ball in the peak of the sleeve is not found at the level of the major leagues. Instead, he's at Triple-A, which this season has gone on to use the MLB ball.

This is an increase of 57%. At each level of the miners, where they always use the old ball, home runs are either steady or down.

So, it's the ball. Which leaves two other questions. Do you like that? And is MLB? The sport has been considerably, if not fundamentally, transformed by a minimal adjustment of the equipment. Either MLB will make further adjustments to moderate these changes, or this – making me a blog of one of the highlighted Orioles in the midst of fantastic regattas – is just the new normality.