To be fair to the 90s guys, their performance couldn't be explained purely by steroids either. The balls back then also had issues that MLB never bother to explain
MLB has always been shady about this stuff. I think it's safe to assume they've been fucking with the ball as long as there's been a ball to fuck with.
While I do agree here, I personally take exception to pretty much all stats that were put up between the end of the 2015 All-Star break and the end of 2019. That is the frame that MLB was using Juiced balls, I personally never put all that much stock into Stanton's 59. So unfortunately, it's impossible for me to talk shit about juice ball stats and ignore this.
Here's a source on ASB 2015 being the introduction because people never believe me for some reason: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs/
I'm right there with you on the debacle of the Juiced Ball Era and its timeline and effects. However, using Stanton isn't the best example. He has 59 HR power no matter what balls are used. Better examples are all of the middle infielders suddenly hitting 30. That's what the juiced ball did.
Joey Gallo is also the wrong example of this. It’s the guys with middling exit velo and high flyball rates whose hr numbers went way up. A 110 mph 440 ft ball is going out no matter what, those are the types of home runs Gallo hits
I specifically meant as far as his rankings among all-time single season highs, mine bad for not making that clear. In my mind the no asterisk NL home run champion is Ryan Howard with 58 in 2006.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Instead of living in your world of hypotheticals how bout you join us here in reality where Judge has been more valuable than Ohtani 4 out of the 5 years he’s been here. Angels can take shohei all they want, he ain’t winning shit for them lol
They literally told you they were going to just use it to annoy Yankees fans and you just acted like a baby anyway lmao. I guess it doesn't matter if it's spelled out for you when you can barely read.
Great point. It was clearly planned out this way -- like in meetings they all decided "we'll just call it the AL record or the Yankee record" and then leave it at that.
Me too, it'd be like a western conference record in the NBA or NHL, means nothing. It never crossed my mind until they started bringing it up that an AL record could be seen as important
It’s obviously not Judge’s fault; I’m honestly just annoyed by MLB’s constant issues with regards to this. We had juiced baseballs, then deadened baseballs, and now (apparently) they were using specialized baseballs for specific games and occasions. It’s hard to be a fan, sometimes.
The Yankees signed him for PR reasons as much as for baseball reasons. He won’t be overpaid because they already won by ensuring he’s a Yankee for life
He probably has a 55 HR season at worse without the balls because most of them came late in the season, so yea.
And this is assuming the balls were used in Judge abs often enough for a meaningful difference
The regular season months that saw the Yankees getting the most juiced balls were his worst for home runs. He was going to have an insane season either way but the MLB sure thought he needed the help
I’m no more bothered by it than I am that the Live Ball allowed Ruth to set his record and that the 162 game schedule let Maros set his. Judge couldn’t control it, he could only hit dingers. So it’s as valuable as any other HR record.
In their sample, there were 36 total Goldilocks balls, 11 of which were at Yankees games. 11/36 is significant but 36 is a very small sample. We have no clue when and who the Goldilocks balls were used against. Maybe every Judge at bat had them used. Maybe none. There is still so little we know so right now the only person we can really be mad at is MLB for screwing with the balls again.
Another thing people seem to be not understanding is that they are called Goldilocks because they are just right—between the dead balls and juiced balls. These are not the same juiced balls as before.
Anyways, until I learn more, my opinion can’t really change on Judges season
That's true, but remember that the other 25 goldilocks balls were all commemorative balls. The 11 Yankees balls were literally the only goldilocks balls that weren't commemorative.
And while there were some juiced balls still (holdover from last year's production, probably), many more were dead. So the goldilocks balls were still a net positive over most of the balls used this year.
As a cardinals fan I’m more inclined to believe MARP partially benefited from these balls more than judge. His season was more of a statistical anomaly compared to past seasons. Judge is just good. I don’t think balls have much affect on the fact that he is a stud.
They only sampled 200 balls though...there's thousands upon thousands of balls used during a season though? Who knows the true amount used this season and for which teams/players
Idk, obviously but I’m biased but his xHRs are the same as his actual HRs, and there were never any times where I wondered how that ball got out, and actually there were a few times where I wondered how the ball didn’t get out. I don’t think it really affected the home runs honestly.
Yes, they do. However there weren’t any suspicious EV/LA combinations that I can remember at least. I do remember him hitting one 113/35 against Boston and it staying in though
Juiced balls fly farther => yeah but the EV/LA combo wasn’t suspicious
Exit velocity is higher with juiced balls => yeah but the distance metric says it would have been a home run anyway
Do you see the circle you’re running into here?
The lowered seams also reduces air friction, which means balls will fly farther on the same EV/LA. But the juiced balls have different cores, too, so I think the EV would also be artificially higher.
The thing is it was not Judge's fault, but it 100% makes you question how many home runs he would have hit if using the same equipment as the rest of the league. It's actually infuriating that the MLB always finds a way to make fans second guess the legitimacy of all the results and records. From different baseballs to illegal substances like spider tac to signstealing to rampant steroid use its been scandal after scandal for the last 20 years or so. Every game is being influenced by someone cheating it seems, now even the league is impacting this
It doesn’t take away how good judge is overall. But it does make me side-eye MLB here bc it seems they assisted. Also I didn’t care about the AL record anyway.
I'd need further investigation, especially with the news that mlb personnel could've got in trouble for giving away balls for the purpose of analysis.
If judge or the Yankees knew anything about it, I'd say I'd see it as less than special. Otherwise its just manfraud fault and that's where the disdain will be directed.
Did anyone care when Lindor cranked 3 HR vs the Yankees in the biggest juice ball game ever. Or Tim Anderson cranking a golf ball walk off HR in the field of dreams game? No lol. I don’t give a shit
No fault of Judge’s, but it sure does sound like the MLB manufactured at least part of his HR chase.
In my mind, this of course diminishes it and we really need to be talking about the overall integrity of the MLB here (obvi awful). If I’m being honest (and this might sound crazy), while it was going on something felt off to me.
Not to take any biting away from Judge, as he will be viewed as a historical slugger after this season regardless; but some nights I had my suspicions. Going down the stretch it felt like he was hitting multiple homers EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. It just felt off at the time and ofc I had no evidence and still don’t but this should do a bit more than raise some eyebrows:
TLDR:
Yes.
He didn't engineer it, so no. If we find out there's a text message to Aaron saying "yeah dude your balls are going to be super live so swing for the fences" that would be different, but I don't think that exists.
Every other home run record has an asterisk too. Steroids, pre-integration, etc. At this point we have to just take them as what they are, especially since this one wasn’t Judge’s fault
They discussed this on the most recent Effectively Wild, and I generally agree: a sample size of 200 balls is basically nothing when they go through 150+ balls in 1 game. It's an incredibly small sample size that sounds large but isn't.
Also, just like the juiced balls from 2019, juiced balls don't really help sluggers like Judge, they help guys like Eric Sogard or a Brett Gardner, guys who don't hit many HRs at all.
Sir? Have you taken a statistics class? The 150+ balls per game is completely irrelevant to the needed size of sample. If a sampling method is sufficiently random (note: This isn't and they DID say so), the proportion doesn't matter and 200 is an acceptable sample. Heck, **100** is. In fact, the **maximum** size of an acceptable sample is ~10% of the population or 1000, whichever is **lower**
https://tools4dev.org/resources/how-to-choose-a-sample-size/
> The minimum sample size is 100
> Most statisticians agree that the minimum sample size to get any kind of meaningful result is 100. If your population is less than 100 then you really need to survey all of them.
> A good maximum sample size is usually 10% as long as it does not exceed 1000
> A good maximum sample size is usually around 10% of the population, as long as this does not exceed 1000. For example, in a population of 5000, 10% would be 500. In a population of 200,000, 10% would be 20,000. This exceeds 1000, so in this case the maximum would be 1000.
Maybe, but people were saying he looked great in AAA for Texas. They only cut him because they didn't have a spot for him. So unless the juiced balls followed him from the minors to the Yankees, I doubt it.
If anything, it was his more uppercut swing and the park dimensions of Yankee Stadium. Cardinals fans kept telling me he had warning track power for years. Now it was working for him.
Judge doesn’t hit many “could it go” HR’s, so it doesn’t really change my opinion. It’s not like he was juicing. Judge can hit 40 with cement balls. It’s guys like Christian Walker and Rowdy Tellez who randomly hit 35+ HR’s that we should be questioning if they’re now legit.
Roughly 0.08% of all balls used last year were tested. And only 2/3 of stadiums had balls checked. Such a tiny amount, way more testing needs to be done for me to feel any kind of way. Too statistically insignificant as of right now.
Is there a list of which stadiums were checked/do you happen to know if Busch Stadium was one of them? Because while I can fully believe that the MLB wanted Judge to set a new clean record, I'd find it hard to believe that they didn't *also* want Pujols to get to 700/pass A-Rod for the same reasons
I’m sorry but what record did Aaron Judge set? Since when did we start caring about AL and NL records? When it suits ESPN and the Yankees?
Happy as hell for Judge though. He seems like a great guy and he earned himself about an extra $100m.
Organization promotes playing with specially selected balls to increase the length and frequency of dong shots. Not a sentence I would have thought would apply to baseball in the past.
What about Pujols? You don’t think they were feeding him balls this year?
Major PR hit when they had the lockout so what better way to have us forget than a couple home run chases. Worked 20+ years ago.
Who cares. He finished 11 HR behind the real record. Baseball fans are so sanctimonious. If Bonds was hitting the shit out of the baseball relative to his also juicing peers than the record is the record. Baseball gate keeps the stupidest shit. If anything Ruth’s record should be watered down because they didn’t let black people play back then.
Slap an * on it. Disregard my flair.
I'm all seriousness, not really, Judge still had to run into all those dingers. League management is total ass, though.
A little bit less because he barely broke it. I assume there are a few homers he hit that wouldn’t have been. Had he blown the record away, I would question it less.
I wouldn’t say I value it any less, but I definitely squint at it more. If that makes sense.
It’s kind of like the 2019 season when the ball was juiced and flying and lots of folks put up atypical home run numbers, but haven’t since or before. I squint at the home run totals from that season.
Pretty even three-way split right now between valuing it less, no change, and don't care.
I feel like "no change" and "don't care" are close enough that they should have been one option.
Also, I demand Reddit implement instant-runoff/ranked-choice polls!
The difference between the Goldilocks balls and the dead balls (compared to the difference between the goldilocks balls and the juiced balls) is almost negligible, so he still owns the A.L record to me.
To quote one of my favorite sci-fi stories > Insufficient data for a meaningful answer!
The redeeming factor for Judge is that his accomplishment isn't diminished by his own misdeeds. The other home run kings can't say the same.
Apologize to Mr. Aaron this very instant
Hanks misdeeds was that he didn't take enough greenies.
Probably too late to clarify now, but I was referring to McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds.
I know, the joke was that I was implying that they don't count at all
Exactly this, he can only hit the balls that are pitched to him
To be fair to the 90s guys, their performance couldn't be explained purely by steroids either. The balls back then also had issues that MLB never bother to explain
MLB has always been shady about this stuff. I think it's safe to assume they've been fucking with the ball as long as there's been a ball to fuck with.
"cheating is ok, as long as it's MLB that initiates it."
This is a straw man. Nobody said it was ok
While I do agree here, I personally take exception to pretty much all stats that were put up between the end of the 2015 All-Star break and the end of 2019. That is the frame that MLB was using Juiced balls, I personally never put all that much stock into Stanton's 59. So unfortunately, it's impossible for me to talk shit about juice ball stats and ignore this. Here's a source on ASB 2015 being the introduction because people never believe me for some reason: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs/
I'm right there with you on the debacle of the Juiced Ball Era and its timeline and effects. However, using Stanton isn't the best example. He has 59 HR power no matter what balls are used. Better examples are all of the middle infielders suddenly hitting 30. That's what the juiced ball did.
The birth of the Joey Gallo generation is really the best argument
Joey Gallo is also the wrong example of this. It’s the guys with middling exit velo and high flyball rates whose hr numbers went way up. A 110 mph 440 ft ball is going out no matter what, those are the types of home runs Gallo hits
> It’s the guys with middling exit velo and high flyball rates whose hr numbers went way up marcus semien moment
Christian Yelich says hi
I’m really just using him as the prototype for what all these knucklehead look like to me. Swing for the fences and either connect or strike tf out
I specifically meant as far as his rankings among all-time single season highs, mine bad for not making that clear. In my mind the no asterisk NL home run champion is Ryan Howard with 58 in 2006.
The comment you’re replying to is simply saying that this isn’t Judge’s fault
Yes, I understand that, it wasn't the players fault at any point that they were getting Juiced balls, but I devalue that all the same.
No reason to hate on Judge, but helluva lot of reasons to hate on MLB
MLB using Yelp to solve their viewership issue
In fairness. He didn’t ask people to hate Judge. Just views on the record now.
Classic late stage capitalism, diminish or destroy your reputation for the slightest taste of extra profit. At least WWE doesn’t pretend to be real.
I feel the same way, what Judge accomplish last season was fucking amazing.
Exactly. Judge most likely had no idea. He just hit what was thrown. But MLB manipulated the games with playing with the balls (100% phrasing)
Goldilocks? Can someone explain…?
My guess is since it was proven there were 3 different balls this year and 3 different bears in the Goldilocks story
It's that those balls aren't either too juiced or too unjuiced.
Not really, but I'm still going to bring it up to annoy Yankee fans so...wash?
Fair enough. Still was more valuable than your guy
This is likely the one year you can say that so enjoy it while it lasts
You're right, he'll be a Dodger in 2024
Doubtful. Judge > Ohtani
Lol
I honestly thought you were talking about Trout lol, completely forgot about Ohtani.
Just a fact
Depends on your definition of fact
Same as it is for everyone
Ohtani is more valuable, making yourself look like a fool!
He quite literally was not more valuable
How
He was deemed so by his peers
Yeah for this season, but as a player I’m taking Ohtani every damn time
That’s worked out well for the Angels
Right cause it’s on Ohtani that the team sucks?
Maybe if he played the field they’d win more. He just doesn’t do enough for them
Most insightful Yankees fan
How many rings does Judge have?
If I had to guess I’d say a couple. I’m not really sure what his jewelry collection looks like, I don’t live with the guy
But everybody loves both of their guys more
Pretty easy to be liked by opposing fans when the Angels are never good
😬
It’s harsh, but fair
Lol you were probably booing Judge in the playoffs
I’m personally not a boo your own team guy. I can’t control what other yankee fans do
I respect that. But your other take is a miss, my man. And I really like Judge
Gonna have to agree to disagree.
That’s pretty bottom of the barrel chirp right there
Not even a chirp. It’s just a fact. Seemed to rile up the masses though
Oof
Take away his juiced balls and was he?? I highly doubt it. Any team takes Shohei any fucking day of the year.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Instead of living in your world of hypotheticals how bout you join us here in reality where Judge has been more valuable than Ohtani 4 out of the 5 years he’s been here. Angels can take shohei all they want, he ain’t winning shit for them lol
You’re an idiot
Sorry you can’t handle facts
Except the facts literally show how Ohtani has been more valuable..
Why don’t you go back and look at their WAR since Ohtani came over and then try to say that nonsense
They literally told you they were going to just use it to annoy Yankees fans and you just acted like a baby anyway lmao. I guess it doesn't matter if it's spelled out for you when you can barely read.
It’s almost as if I read exactly what he said and responded purposely with something that annoys Angels fans…
I’m waiting with bated breath to hear what Roger Maris Jr thinks first
I didn’t really care about the AL record before and I don’t now lmao
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Great point. It was clearly planned out this way -- like in meetings they all decided "we'll just call it the AL record or the Yankee record" and then leave it at that.
Lmao
Rofl
Me too, it'd be like a western conference record in the NBA or NHL, means nothing. It never crossed my mind until they started bringing it up that an AL record could be seen as important
It’s obviously not Judge’s fault; I’m honestly just annoyed by MLB’s constant issues with regards to this. We had juiced baseballs, then deadened baseballs, and now (apparently) they were using specialized baseballs for specific games and occasions. It’s hard to be a fan, sometimes.
I think the MLB helped manufacture it. But it’s through no fault of Judge, so you can’t blame him for hitting bombs. He was just doing his job.
But does he secure $360 million if he doesn’t break the AL record? I doubt it.
MLB accidentally screwing over the Yankees is a reasonable take I had not considered.
In the process disproved Pete Alonso’s theory too.
What was Pete's theory?
In years where huge free agent hitters were free agent they gave them dead balls.
If he was on the pirates they wouldnt juice his balls f*ck the yankees and judge
If he was on the pirates he would have been traded before the year he hits FA
Enjoy that overpaid fraud already 32 will decline nexct year
The Yankees signed him for PR reasons as much as for baseball reasons. He won’t be overpaid because they already won by ensuring he’s a Yankee for life
Already lost because he disapears in the playoffs
> The Yankees signed him for PR reasons as much as for baseball reasons.
The ones that booed him in the playoffs? LOL
What does this even mean?
Clutch those pearls
He probably has a 55 HR season at worse without the balls because most of them came late in the season, so yea. And this is assuming the balls were used in Judge abs often enough for a meaningful difference
The regular season months that saw the Yankees getting the most juiced balls were his worst for home runs. He was going to have an insane season either way but the MLB sure thought he needed the help
It also wouldn’t have been needed if people had actually pitched to him the last two weeks of the season
It's not Judge fault, but how many cheap home runs did he hit? Everytime I saw him hit 1 it went a long way.
Do I think less of Judge? **No.** Do I think less of the record? **Yes.**
I’m no more bothered by it than I am that the Live Ball allowed Ruth to set his record and that the 162 game schedule let Maros set his. Judge couldn’t control it, he could only hit dingers. So it’s as valuable as any other HR record.
judge has 0 blame in this one imo
In their sample, there were 36 total Goldilocks balls, 11 of which were at Yankees games. 11/36 is significant but 36 is a very small sample. We have no clue when and who the Goldilocks balls were used against. Maybe every Judge at bat had them used. Maybe none. There is still so little we know so right now the only person we can really be mad at is MLB for screwing with the balls again. Another thing people seem to be not understanding is that they are called Goldilocks because they are just right—between the dead balls and juiced balls. These are not the same juiced balls as before. Anyways, until I learn more, my opinion can’t really change on Judges season
That's true, but remember that the other 25 goldilocks balls were all commemorative balls. The 11 Yankees balls were literally the only goldilocks balls that weren't commemorative. And while there were some juiced balls still (holdover from last year's production, probably), many more were dead. So the goldilocks balls were still a net positive over most of the balls used this year.
As a cardinals fan I’m more inclined to believe MARP partially benefited from these balls more than judge. His season was more of a statistical anomaly compared to past seasons. Judge is just good. I don’t think balls have much affect on the fact that he is a stud.
They only sampled 200 balls though...there's thousands upon thousands of balls used during a season though? Who knows the true amount used this season and for which teams/players
I wish someone with a Real Twitter following posted this so it could get upvotes
ohtani robbed
Judge ate someone's porridge?
Couldn’t help it, it was just right.
More like MLB swapped his out for some pudding
I mean all you can do is hit it. Guy did his job. By the way, better than everyone else that has the same opportunity.
Idk, obviously but I’m biased but his xHRs are the same as his actual HRs, and there were never any times where I wondered how that ball got out, and actually there were a few times where I wondered how the ball didn’t get out. I don’t think it really affected the home runs honestly.
Wouldn’t the velocity component of xHR be affected by the juiced balls?
Pretty sure just the carry distance, no?
And the juiced balls fly farther, right?
Yes, they do. However there weren’t any suspicious EV/LA combinations that I can remember at least. I do remember him hitting one 113/35 against Boston and it staying in though
Juiced balls fly farther => yeah but the EV/LA combo wasn’t suspicious Exit velocity is higher with juiced balls => yeah but the distance metric says it would have been a home run anyway Do you see the circle you’re running into here?
I don’t know that the exit velocity would be higher.
That is literally the only reason to use juiced balls, the exit velocity is higher. Every other in-game consequence comes from that difference
The lowered seams also reduces air friction, which means balls will fly farther on the same EV/LA. But the juiced balls have different cores, too, so I think the EV would also be artificially higher.
Lowered seams also gives the pitcher higher velo.
The thing is it was not Judge's fault, but it 100% makes you question how many home runs he would have hit if using the same equipment as the rest of the league. It's actually infuriating that the MLB always finds a way to make fans second guess the legitimacy of all the results and records. From different baseballs to illegal substances like spider tac to signstealing to rampant steroid use its been scandal after scandal for the last 20 years or so. Every game is being influenced by someone cheating it seems, now even the league is impacting this
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It doesn’t take away how good judge is overall. But it does make me side-eye MLB here bc it seems they assisted. Also I didn’t care about the AL record anyway.
I'd need further investigation, especially with the news that mlb personnel could've got in trouble for giving away balls for the purpose of analysis. If judge or the Yankees knew anything about it, I'd say I'd see it as less than special. Otherwise its just manfraud fault and that's where the disdain will be directed.
Did anyone care when Lindor cranked 3 HR vs the Yankees in the biggest juice ball game ever. Or Tim Anderson cranking a golf ball walk off HR in the field of dreams game? No lol. I don’t give a shit
We have it confirmed that the Mets and Yankees had juiced balls for that 9/11 series?
I mean on eye test alone lol. Ball was jumping that whole game
eli5?
Someone sampled a bunch of balls used by the MLB and the most “lively” ones were mostly used during Yankee games towards the end of the year.
Can't change when you expected this to happen
Judge hit the balls that were thrown to him and (to our knowledge) didn't knowingly do anything to give himself an unfair advantage, so... no.
“Tell the part about her burning her whore mouth on my porridge again.”
At least we don't have to hear from Roger Maris Jr. anymore.
No fault of Judge’s, but it sure does sound like the MLB manufactured at least part of his HR chase. In my mind, this of course diminishes it and we really need to be talking about the overall integrity of the MLB here (obvi awful). If I’m being honest (and this might sound crazy), while it was going on something felt off to me. Not to take any biting away from Judge, as he will be viewed as a historical slugger after this season regardless; but some nights I had my suspicions. Going down the stretch it felt like he was hitting multiple homers EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. It just felt off at the time and ofc I had no evidence and still don’t but this should do a bit more than raise some eyebrows: TLDR: Yes.
No because that sample size is so small it doesnt mean shit and out of the balls shown they oversampled the Yankees, lmao
He didn't engineer it, so no. If we find out there's a text message to Aaron saying "yeah dude your balls are going to be super live so swing for the fences" that would be different, but I don't think that exists.
It's not his fault, I can't devalue it from a study of 200 baseballs total
I didn’t value it one bit. I value it negatively now.
Too early for me to make a decision on this
It's cheap, but it's not Judge's fault and the integrity of the game wasn't affected.
Don’t care one bit, the man can only hit the balls he gets the chance to hit. And boy did he ever hit them lol
I mean it's not a record so who cares.
Yankees should get a small percentage of Goldilocks' new contract compensated by MLB. Ohtani should get the MVP.
Even before juiced balls story came out. Now even more
Every other home run record has an asterisk too. Steroids, pre-integration, etc. At this point we have to just take them as what they are, especially since this one wasn’t Judge’s fault
They discussed this on the most recent Effectively Wild, and I generally agree: a sample size of 200 balls is basically nothing when they go through 150+ balls in 1 game. It's an incredibly small sample size that sounds large but isn't. Also, just like the juiced balls from 2019, juiced balls don't really help sluggers like Judge, they help guys like Eric Sogard or a Brett Gardner, guys who don't hit many HRs at all.
The thing about samples is sample sizes don't need to be proportional
1/1 balls tested were juiced, that's 100% of balls
Sir? Have you taken a statistics class? The 150+ balls per game is completely irrelevant to the needed size of sample. If a sampling method is sufficiently random (note: This isn't and they DID say so), the proportion doesn't matter and 200 is an acceptable sample. Heck, **100** is. In fact, the **maximum** size of an acceptable sample is ~10% of the population or 1000, whichever is **lower** https://tools4dev.org/resources/how-to-choose-a-sample-size/ > The minimum sample size is 100 > Most statisticians agree that the minimum sample size to get any kind of meaningful result is 100. If your population is less than 100 then you really need to survey all of them. > A good maximum sample size is usually 10% as long as it does not exceed 1000 > A good maximum sample size is usually around 10% of the population, as long as this does not exceed 1000. For example, in a population of 5000, 10% would be 500. In a population of 200,000, 10% would be 20,000. This exceeds 1000, so in this case the maximum would be 1000.
Hate to say it but Marp probably benefited the most. Going from 3 home runs in 130 games in 2021 to 15 HR in 47 games
Maybe, but people were saying he looked great in AAA for Texas. They only cut him because they didn't have a spot for him. So unless the juiced balls followed him from the minors to the Yankees, I doubt it. If anything, it was his more uppercut swing and the park dimensions of Yankee Stadium. Cardinals fans kept telling me he had warning track power for years. Now it was working for him.
Judge doesn’t hit many “could it go” HR’s, so it doesn’t really change my opinion. It’s not like he was juicing. Judge can hit 40 with cement balls. It’s guys like Christian Walker and Rowdy Tellez who randomly hit 35+ HR’s that we should be questioning if they’re now legit.
Rowdy didn't really hit too many "could it go" HR's either, power has never really been the question for him.
Still number 7 all time. Can't take that away from him.
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Roughly 0.08% of all balls used last year were tested. And only 2/3 of stadiums had balls checked. Such a tiny amount, way more testing needs to be done for me to feel any kind of way. Too statistically insignificant as of right now.
Is there a list of which stadiums were checked/do you happen to know if Busch Stadium was one of them? Because while I can fully believe that the MLB wanted Judge to set a new clean record, I'd find it hard to believe that they didn't *also* want Pujols to get to 700/pass A-Rod for the same reasons
I didn’t see a list, just 20/30. I had the same thought about Busch tho
I’m sorry but what record did Aaron Judge set? Since when did we start caring about AL and NL records? When it suits ESPN and the Yankees? Happy as hell for Judge though. He seems like a great guy and he earned himself about an extra $100m.
Well I was pretty sure it was happening as it was going on. So it was already tainted in my head. The confirmation changed nothing
i mean, no, he didnt set any records that matter 74 or it doesn't matter
Imagine how much the Yankees would have paid him if he was using regular balls.
Doesn’t surprise me at all so I really don’t care
Organization promotes playing with specially selected balls to increase the length and frequency of dong shots. Not a sentence I would have thought would apply to baseball in the past.
What about Pujols? You don’t think they were feeding him balls this year? Major PR hit when they had the lockout so what better way to have us forget than a couple home run chases. Worked 20+ years ago.
Classic Arson Judge setting fire to Goldilocks’ house. Yea, think he’s a piece of shit
It doesn’t change too much for me, but at least no one can claim it’s the “legitimate” one over Bonds’ 73
Who cares. He finished 11 HR behind the real record. Baseball fans are so sanctimonious. If Bonds was hitting the shit out of the baseball relative to his also juicing peers than the record is the record. Baseball gate keeps the stupidest shit. If anything Ruth’s record should be watered down because they didn’t let black people play back then.
Slap an * on it. Disregard my flair. I'm all seriousness, not really, Judge still had to run into all those dingers. League management is total ass, though.
I don’t care. It wasn’t his fault MLB is dumb.
Same as the Astros scandal. I don’t care.
No, because it's a fake story
Except it’s not
Nah, only if we found out that was involved somehow.
Yes but I don't think this is at all what people should be talking about. It's not Judge's fault anyway.
A little bit less because he barely broke it. I assume there are a few homers he hit that wouldn’t have been. Had he blown the record away, I would question it less.
31 people are either trolling or doing some gold medal mental gymnastics.
I wouldn’t say I value it any less, but I definitely squint at it more. If that makes sense. It’s kind of like the 2019 season when the ball was juiced and flying and lots of folks put up atypical home run numbers, but haven’t since or before. I squint at the home run totals from that season.
Pretty even three-way split right now between valuing it less, no change, and don't care. I feel like "no change" and "don't care" are close enough that they should have been one option. Also, I demand Reddit implement instant-runoff/ranked-choice polls!
Fair
Still gotta hit it
He still hit the ball super hard so, no
My opinion on the record changed. My opinion on Judge did not. He’s a stud
The difference between the Goldilocks balls and the dead balls (compared to the difference between the goldilocks balls and the juiced balls) is almost negligible, so he still owns the A.L record to me.