Month: September 2022

Let’s look at how his season compares to the other players who were on similar homer paces entering September.

During a road trip to his home state over the past week, Aaron Judge continued his historic home run chase. When the Yankees’ slugger went yard on Monday against the Angels, he became the seventh different player ever to hit 50 homers before September. The following night, he launched No. 51.

Judge has virtually no chance of equaling Barry Bonds’s single-season record of 73 home runs, but that shouldn’t diminish what he is doing this season. The top six single-season home run totals are all attributed to Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, three players who used performance-enhancing drugs (In 2012, McGwire admitted to using steroids during his career; Bonds and Sosa have denied it, but there is strong evidence that they took PEDs.) The seventh-highest total of 61, however, belongs to former Yankees great Roger Maris, who holds the American League record for the most single-season homers. Judge and Maris are the only two AL players to reach 50 home runs before September.

Sixty-one still carries weight in baseball as the “clean” home run record, and it’s well within reach for Judge. After launching 51 home runs in New York’s first 131 contests, Judge needs 11 home runs over the final 31 games to pass Maris; he’s on pace for 63. The 30-year-old has racked up five long balls in his last nine games, so he certainly doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Judge has a lot of things working in his favor when you consider the context of his season compared to the other sluggers who hit 50 before September. Because the season started a week late due to the lockout, he has more games left at this time of year than the others.

Only two players who hit 50 homers by September ended up not reaching 61 (though it’s worth noting the success rate is 1-for-3 for those not credibly linked to PEDs). Unlike the other players on this list, Judge also has the advantage of getting some of his plate appearances at DH if Yankees manager Aaron Boone wants to rest him in the field. Everyone else either played in the National League before the universal DH was instituted this season or, as Maris did, played before the DH was instituted at all. Judge has filled the DH role 19 times so far, and he’s only sat out for the entirety of a game four times. Until he passes Maris, he’ll almost certainly hit every day, barring injury.

Let’s see what unfolded for the four hitters on the path most similar to Judge in terms of the pace they set over the course of the season and how many games each had left entering September.

Roger Maris (1961)

Yep, we begin with the ghost Judge is chasing—the home run record unstained by PEDs. Maris famously didn’t leave the yard in his first 10 games and had only a dozen by the end of May. But a monstrous summer had him standing at 51 home runs with 30 games to go, while Judge is at 51 with 31 games left.

Maris had a few bursts throughout September—a two-homer game against the Tigers on Sept. 2, three in four games from Sept. 6 to 9 and three more in a five-game span from Sept. 16 to 20—that put him at 59 with eight games to play. But the day after Maris hit No. 60 to tie Babe Ruth’s single-season record on Sept. 26, the Yankees kept him out of the lineup for the first and only time that season, despite New York’s having four games left to play and an off day on the 28th. It was an extremely stressful time for Maris, who hadn’t been embraced by fans as dearly as the two Yankees icons he was contending with for the record: Ruth, whose record had stood for 31 years and whose cultural clout weighed on Maris through much of the season, especially over the final month; and teammate Mickey Mantle, who was also chasing Ruth’s record before a hip injury—and subsequent infection due to an injection to cure the injury—slowed his pace and eventually kept him out of the lineup.

Maris failed to get a hold of one in either of the first two games of New York’s season-ending series against the Red Sox. But he succeeded in dramatic fashion in the fourth inning of the season’s final game, turning on a 2–0 fastball from rookie Tracy Stallard to finish his quest and provide the only run in a shutout win for the eventual World Series champions.

When Maris surpassed Ruth, MLB commissioner Ford Frick declared that he wasn’t the official record holder because he’d needed eight more games to beat The Bambino—Frick had just expanded the schedule from 154 to 162 games ahead of the season to coincide with the American League increasing from eight to 10 teams. “The Asterisk,” as it was called, wasn’t removed until 1991, five commissioners after Frick and six years after Maris’s death. It would be interesting to see whether Judge’s 62nd home run would be treated with a different sort of asterisk if he can claim the “clean” crown.

Sammy Sosa (2001)

At this point, Sosa was a beloved superstar who’d already captivated the nation with his first successful bid to pass Maris alongside McGwire three years earlier. But the spotlight was largely off of him during this period because of Barry Bonds’s ongoing rewriting of the record books in San Francisco, in addition to the 9/11 attacks that shut down baseball for a week.

Sosa had crushed 17 home runs in 29 August games, coming up one short of the August record set by Detroit’s Rudy York in 1937 and that would be matched by Stanton 16 years later. But the then-33-year-old hit a cold period before 9/11, tallying just one in his last eight games before the most infamous day in modern U.S. history. After every team took a week off to mourn, Sosa eventually got back on track with three home runs off of Astros rookie Tim Redding on Sept. 23, becoming the first player in MLB history to hit three homers in a game three times in one season. He ripped only one in his next seven games—with that lone trot counting as one of his most famous trips around the bases—then finished on a tear with five in the Cubs’ final six games, against the Reds and Pirates at Wrigley Field, to finish with 64.

That 2001 season was the third one in which Sosa hit at least 60 home runs, making him the only player in MLB history to reach that mark as many times. Remarkably, Sosa had the second most homers in each of those three years, which speaks to the era’s offensive environment. This year, it’s Judge and then everybody else. Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber leads the NL in dingers with 36, while Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, who ranks second in the AL, is 20 behind Judge entering September. This is all to say the context surrounding Judge’s 51 homers this year is different than it was for Sosa in ’01, as well as in Sosa’s three other 50-homer seasons (1998, ’99, ’00).

Whether it’s Sosa’s PED use, the weeklong break or the eras in which they played, the circumstances for Sosa’s ’01 season make it more difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about where Judge will end up. But Sosa’s impressive final week represents the sort of output Judge might need to replicate at some point over the next month to eclipse Maris.

Luis Gonzalez (2001)

Even though Gonzalez was one of three players in ’01 on pace to at least match Maris’s record heading into September, he’s best known for something else he accomplished at the plate that year that’s even more remarkable—coming out on top against Mariano Rivera in Game 7 of the World Series to give the Diamondbacks their first and only title.

While Gonzalez entered September with 51 homers, he had four fewer games remaining than Judge does. The larger obstacle for his bid was that he simply didn’t have the same sort of power pedigree as his peers on the above table. While Judge cranked 52 round-trippers in his rookie year, Gonzalez never topped more than 31 aside from this 57-homer outburst. He has never been credibly linked to steroids, but because of his ’01 power surge and the era in which he played, some people still are skeptical of his accomplishments. Then again, Maris had just three 30-home run seasons in his career, and they all came in consecutive years—he hit 39 in 1960, 61 in ’61 and 33 in ’62. Some of the best home run hitters in history—Henry Aaron, Albert Pujols, Frank Robinson, to name a few—never hit 50 in a single season. Eddie Murray, who retired with 509 homers, never had more than 33 in a season, and only three times had more than 31. The point is it’s incredibly difficult for any hitter to sustain this level of power, over a six-month season, let alone do it across multiple years. Judge is one of 10 players to reach the 50-dinger mark at least twice in his career.

Gonzalez fell back to earth right around the time he turned 34 on Sept. 3, failing to homer in the first eight games of the month before the weeklong break after 9/11. Even after the week of rest, he hit just two round-trippers in his first 10 games back. That left him with too big of a mountain to climb, as the four homers he managed in Arizona’s final nine games still left him with just six home runs over the final month’s worth of games in September and October, his lowest monthly total of the year.

Still, he’s probably happy with how his season ended.

Giancarlo Stanton (2017)

Stanton roared into September even hotter than Sosa did in 2001. Then in his final season with the Marlins, Stanton hit 18 home runs in August, which is by far the highest monthly total of his career, after he started off with just seven apiece in April, May and June. That didn’t carry over into September, though, as he went 9-for-53 (.170) with 10 walks and three homers in his first 15 games that month.

He entered the second to last series of the season—a three-game set vs. the Rockies at Coors Field—needing four home runs to tie Maris, but he went 1-for-12 with four strikeouts and a double in Colorado. The Marlins finished the season with four home games against Atlanta. Stanton mashed two dingers in the first game of the series, putting him within another pair of tying Maris with three to play and leaving open the possibility that he could get there. The Braves didn’t exactly shut down Stanton from there—he went 5-for-14 with four singles and a double in the final three contests—but they kept him in the yard.

Hitting 59 home runs was good enough to earn the NL MVP and tie Babe Ruth’s 1921 season for ninth-most all-time—in addition to being the most since 2001—but it wasn’t enough to stamp it as a truly historic season. The chase did, though, leave Marlins fans with some fond memories of the franchise’s most prolific slugger just months before he was traded to the Yankees that December.

Judge enters September with two more games to play than Stanton had in 2017 and the same number of homers. As was the case with Stanton, Judge’s push for 61 is going to be tight. He’s on track to make it, and as he has proven throughout this season, it’d be unwise to bet against him.

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The veteran receiver is joining Tennessee after being cut by Kansas City during training camp.

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Veteran wide receiver Josh Gordon has signed with the Titans’ practice squad, according to a report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

Gordon had most recently been with the Chiefs during training camp, but was part of the franchise’s final roster cuts earlier this week. His signing with Tennessee continues his attempt at yet another NFL comeback. The 31-year-old pass-catcher has struggled to stay on the field throughout the course of his career due to repeated violations of the league’s substance abuse policy.

There’s no doubt that there’s plenty of talent with Gordon, whose best season came in 2013 when he caught 87 passes for 1,646 yards and nine touchdowns. He played in 14 games that season, the most in his nine-year career.

Gordon’s violation of the substance abuse policy kept him off the field in 2015 and ’16, and cost him games with the Patriots in ’18 as well.

He played in 12 games last season with the Chiefs, but only caught five passes for 32 yards and a touchdown due to being buried on the depth chart. It was the worst statistical season of his career.

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An 11–2 season with a Rose Bowl win is considered excellent at most schools. But the Buckeyes aren’t most schools.

Ryan Day stood in front of a live Big Ten Network audience and a football field full of journalists in July and essentially declared the 2021 Ohio State football season a failure.

“Maybe at some places 11–2 with a Rose Bowl victory is a good year. It isn’t at Ohio State,” the coach of the Buckeyes said. “Our three goals are: beat the team up north, win the Big Ten championship, win the national championship. That’s our goals, and those things didn’t happen last year.”

It was a remarkable statement. It articulated both admirable ambition and unsettling urgency. Daring to be the best can be a good thing, but the consequences of falling short can be stark.

With that as the standard—beat Michigan, win the Big Ten, win it all—Ohio State has had all of six “good years” in the history of a program that began in 1890. (You could make a case for a couple of other national championships won outside of the AP, UPI, BCS or College Football Playoff titles of 1942, ’54, ’57, ’68, 2002 and ’14, but they are contested claims.) If 11 victories and winning a thrilling Rose Bowl aren’t good enough, is this outlook realistic or healthy? And if that’s the expectation, how much pressure is heaped upon the current Buckeyes coming off a “bad year” like ’21?

When Ohio State’s players run into a roaring Horseshoe on Saturday night to play Notre Dame and kick off this season, they surely know what they’re getting into. It’s a lot to handle.

They must win this year, and they must atone. Another early-season, nonconference home upset loss would not go over well, but a repeat of the late-season loss to Michigan would be viewed as ruination. A postseason that does not include victory in Indianapolis in the league championship game is unacceptable. Even making the College Football Playoff, a triumph at 129 of the 131 FBS schools, does not merit Job Well Done kudos.

“The expectation is to win them all,” Day said flatly in July. “I said that in my opening press conference when I was named the head coach [in 2018], and that’s just the way it is.”

Day has taken a good run at that impossible expectation—he’s 34–4 as coach, a preposterous record to begin a career. But after winning his first 22 regular-season games, there was that comeuppance against the Ducks. And after winning his first 24 Big Ten games, there was the beatdown in the Big House against the Wolverines. And after making the CFP his first two seasons, there was the letdown of merely going to the Rose Bowl.

This doesn’t feel like a Larry Coker at Miami situation two decades ago, but it’s something to monitor. Like Day, Coker was promoted from within, replacing Butch Davis who left for the NFL. Coker inherited an all-time great roster, won the national championship his first season (2001), then played for the championship again his second season (losing to Ohio State). Then it began to slide: two losses his third season, three in his fourth and fifth, then a 7–6 record in ’06 that got him fired. The Miami dynasty hasn’t been the same since.

After making the Playoff his first two seasons, Day experienced a tiny bit of slippage in his third—enough to notice at a place that chases perfection. Enough to raise just a tremor of concern about whether Coach Third Base—as Jim Harbaugh alluded to Day last November—can sustain or build upon the juggernaut that Urban Meyer left him, or whether it’s diminishing returns going forward. Enough to make this season mighty important.

On paper and in the cocoon of preseason, this Ohio State team should be better than 11–2. The only team anyone consistently ranked higher than the Buckeyes is the only team with commensurate expectations, Alabama. Nobody figures to have a better offense. Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles was hired at a rock-star salary to mold a top-10 unit nationally in Day’s sky-hit estimation (“That’s what we want”). As of today, Day’s squad would be solidly favored in every pre-Playoff game.

So the Ohio State urgency is backed by tangible optimism. It seemingly has the personnel, the coaching and the schedule to take a run at it all. And the hunger as well.

Take the Michigan game. The Buckeyes have lost 59 times to their historic rival, but they talk as if defeat can never be tolerated again at the hands of the Wolverines. “We had to sit on that for a calendar year,” Day said. “It’s not good. It’s something we never want to have to go through again.”

Day’s loftiest of standards have trickled down to the players. Listen to them and you can hear almost a dismissive attitude toward any 2021 accomplishments. Especially from quarterback C.J. Stroud.

At this point last season, he’d never thrown a college pass. He wound up throwing for 4,435 yards and 44 touchdowns, leading the nation in yards per attempt (10.1) and finishing second in efficiency (186.56). He was a Heisman Trophy finalist.

And he sounds completely unimpressed with himself.

“I didn’t accomplish that much,” Stroud said at Big Ten media days. “I feel like I didn’t do a lot. I barely touched my potential. … Everyone pats you on the back for the simple stuff, which I appreciate, but I’m not patting myself on the back. I do my job decently well. I don’t think I’m terrible. But I can be better in all areas.”

I asked Day about that self-evaluation from Stroud, whether his quarterback was being too hard on himself. His answer: “It says a lot about C.J. He’s very driven. He wants it really bad. I think that’s what makes him great. He did a lot of great things last year, but I think his best football is ahead of him.”

Ohio State’s best football under Day could be ahead of it this season. If it’s not—if the trinity of goals is not accomplished again this year—can the Buckeyes still have a “good” season? That’s an existential question Ohio State fans don’t want to consider.

When the publicly stated goal is to win everything, the attendant pressure is immense. And Ryan Day wouldn’t want it any other way.

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Though Elijah Moore is only in his second year, his ability and savvy remind his QB of a former great receiver, writes Henry McKenna.

The two-time All-Star added another honor to her trophy case on Thursday.

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After following up her breakout 2021 campaign with another All Star-caliber season,  Connecticut Sun forward Brionna Jones has been named the 2022 Kia WNBA Sixth Player of the Year

The league announced Thursday that Jones, 26, earned 53 of a possible 56 votes from a panel of national media members to claim the honor, handily beating out Sky forward/center Azurá Stevens and Mystics forward Myisha Hines-Allen.

Jones, a first-time All-Star and the WNBA’s Most Improved Player a year ago, made the most of her opportunities in a key reserve role for Connecticut this season. Despite returning to the bench in the wake of Alyssa Thomas’s return after starting all 32 games in the ’21 season, Jones turned in another impressive all-round effort for the No. 3 seed Sun. She averaged 13.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 1.2 steals in 36 games (seven starts), en route to being named a 2022 WNBA All-Star–making her the only non-starter selected to compete in the star-studded exhibition.

Drafted with the No. 8 pick out of Maryland in 2017, Jones, who also earned second-team All-Defense honors last season, has steadily emerged as one of the W’s most promising post players over the past few seasons. She is a tough defender who knows how to make her presence felt on both ends of the floor, and has provided coach Curt Miller with a starting-caliber big who can more than adequately spell reigning MVP Jonquel Jones and play crucial minutes.

As Jones continues to grow as a player, Connecticut may face steep competition to retain the budding star’s services when she hits free agency this summer. For now, though, the Sun remain throughly focused on the present with the club currently tied 1–1 against the No. 2 seed Sky in the WNBA playoff semifinals.

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