Mark McGwire

With 62 in the bag, New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is now the American League's all-time single-season home run champion. Some might also recognize him as the "real" or "true" single-season champ for all of Major League Baseball.

That's a no from us, but it is with zero reservations that we're about to argue for Judge's 2022 season as the most impressive entry in MLB's six-member 60 Home Run Club.

First things first, though. Or rather, 62nd things 62nd.

Having already matched Babe Ruth's old record of 60 from 1927 on Sept. 20 and Roger Maris' subsequent record of 61 from 1961 on Wednesday, it was on Tuesday that Judge finally claimed the all-time AL mark for himself. His 62nd home run was a 391-foot blast off Texas Rangers righty Jesus Tinoco:

SIXTY-TWO! BASEBALL HISTORY! @TheJudge44 is the American League home run King! pic.twitter.com/QKrcuOvZMU

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) October 5, 2022

Though Judge is still 11 home runs short of the MLB-record 73 that Barry Bonds hit in 2001, Roger Maris Jr. surely isn't alone in his refusal to validate Bonds' mark. After all, the era that contained not only Bonds' 2001 season but also Mark McGwire's 60-plus-homer efforts from 1998 and 1999 and Sammy Sosa's from '98, '99 and '01 can be fairly described as unusual.

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The Other 60-HR Players Had Advantages

But do you know who doesn't want to hear it? Judge himself.

The Linden, California native and formerly self-professed San Francisco Giants fan has said on more than one occasion that he still holds Bonds' 73 blasts from '01 as MLB's real home run record, including in September in an interview with Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated:

“Seventy-three is the record. In my book. No matter what people want to say about that era of baseball, for me, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers, and that to me is what the record is. The AL record is 61, so that is one I can kind of try to go after. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s been a fun year so far.”

Back before he was Judge's teammate on the Yankees, Giancarlo Stanton had a different take when he was making a run at 60 homers with the Miami Marlins in 2017. As he told Dave Hyde of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, "Considering some things, I do [believe 61 is the record]."

The blanks in Stanton's statement were and still are easy to fill. Bonds, McGwire and Sosa had their homer-hitting heydays during the heart of baseball's steroid era in the late 1990s and early 2000s. So even if MLB hasn't scrubbed their achievements from the record books, there's nonetheless a question about their legitimacy.

Perhaps all the more so given that all three players had strong ties to performance-enhancing drugs. We know for a fact that McGwire used androstenedione. For his part, Sosa reportedly tested positive for PEDs in 2003. Albeit a purportedly unwitting one, Bonds acknowledged, via his lawyer, to being a user in 2011.

There may have also been other home run-friendly factors during baseball's steroid era. Expansion in 1993 and 1998 theoretically thinned out the league's pitching, and a juiced ball might have been in play.

And yet credit goes to Mike Axisa of CBS Sports for making an argument five years ago that still rings true: If you're going to ding Bonds, McGwire and Sosa for having played during the steroid era, then it's only fair to also ding Ruth and Maris for the circumstances under which they chartered the 60 Home Run Club.

Ruth played when the American League and the National League had only eight teams apiece, with no interleague play. He was thus playing against the same seven opponents over and over again. This was also 20 years before MLB integrated in 1947, and the Bambino himself knew all about what kind of talent the league was keeping out.

Though it was 14 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier that Maris surpassed Ruth in 1961, that was an expansion year in more ways than one for the American League. It added two teams and lengthened its schedule from 154 to 162 games.

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Judge Has None of These Advantages

In the 75 years since Robinson first suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Major League Baseball has only become more diverse as it has been infused with talent from all over the world. In the sense that it hasn't expanded since '98, the league is also pretty well settled.

As for whether Judge could be juicing, suffice it to say there are good reasons seemingly not a single soul actually thinks so.

He hasn't tested positive for anything, and he's about the last player on the planet who would need to even think about taking PEDs to get better at his job. At 6'7", 282 pounds, he's the biggest hitter in MLB history. Accordingly, he hits the ball harder than anyone in the sport.

Aaron Judge is first player in the Statcast era (since 2015) to have 5 batted balls of 110+ mph in a single game

— Katie Sharp (@ktsharp) September 18, 2022

Has Judge nonetheless benefited from playing his home games at Yankee Stadium, where the right field foul pole is famously just 314 feet away?

Yes, but not as much as you might think. The ever-useful Twitter account "Would it dong?" has flagged only two "unicorns"—that is, home runs that would be out at one stadium and nowhere else—for Judge at Yankee Stadium all year. Statcast puts his expected home runs at 61, indicating that his count is right where it ought to be.

If Judge was doing all this amid the extraordinary home run environments of 2017, 2019 or 2020, there would inevitably be talk of juiced balls. Home runs are down in 2022, however, precisely because there are new balls that aren't traveling as far.

There's also a compelling piece of circumstantial evidence that the ball isn't juiced.

If it was, one would expect Judge to have had company in his pursuit of home run history. In actuality, Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber is his closest companion with a relatively paltry 46 home runs. Previously, a home run lead that large was known only to Ruth and Jimmie Foxx.

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If Anything, Judge Is Disadvantaged

In addition to watered-down talent pools, PEDs and juiced balls, you know what else is advantageous for home run hitters?

Familiarity.

Hypothetically, the more times a batter sees a pitcher, the more likely they are to adjust to said pitcher. This is quantifiably true within games, as batters fare better against starting pitchers the more times they face them.

Nobody should be surprised to hear that this advantage doesn't apply nearly as much to Judge as it has to other members of the 60 Home Run Club. He's the first one to be stuck with a 60-40 split for his matchups against starters and relievers:

The difference is in how often Judge faces a reliever for the first time in a game in lieu of a starter for a third or fourth time. Those situations are the opposite of conducive to power hitting in 2022, as the average batter is slugging .446 in a third matchup against a starter and only .376 in a first matchup against a reliever.

This, in turn, also helps explain why Judge has seen so many more individual pitchers than any of the 60-homer players who came before him:

• Babe Ruth, 1927: 64 pitchers
• Roger Maris, 1961: 101 pitchers
• Sammy Sosa, 1998: 211 pitchers
• Mark McGwire, 1998: 201 pitchers
• Sammy Sosa, 1999: 215 pitchers
• Mark McGwire, 1999: 198 pitchers
• Sammy Sosa, 2001: 213 pitchers
• Barry Bonds, 2001: 205 pitchers
• Aaron Judge, 2022: 254 pitchers

And these 254 pitchers? They haven't taken it easy on Judge.

He's seen a higher rate of 95-plus mph fastballs (34.5 percent) than all but nine other hitters, and that's even as he's seen fewer fastballs on a rate basis (49.9 percent) than the average hitter (55.7 percent). Pitchers prefer to feed him sliders, aka the pitch against which he has the highest whiff rate (34.1 percent) out of the breaking ball family.

Did Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa or Bonds face such nasty stuff on a day-to-day basis? Nobody can say for sure, but "no" is a safe guess.

Consider what things were like in 2008, the first year Statcast lists pitch-tracking data. The highest rate of 95-plus mph fastballs that any hitter saw that year was a mere 20.7 percent, while the whiff rate on the average slider was 3.7 percentage points lower than it is in 2022.

If that's what things were like 14 years ago, then it's hard to fathom hitters were facing as nasty or even nastier stuff in 2001. Or 1999. Or 1998. Or 1961. Or definitely 1927.

This is not to rule out the possibility that someone from the past could have hit 60-plus home runs in 2022. Take it from Baseball Reference's neutralized batting tool, which posits that '01 Bonds (69 HR) and '98 McGwire (64 HR) could have done so.

But as that's the end of the list, there's simply not enough to distract from the fact that only one person has actually topped 60 home runs in this year's environment.

For this, Judge can, should and indeed must take a bow.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.

Once one of the most valuable sports memorabilia items in the world, Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball from the 1998 season has plummeted in value over the subsequent 22 years.

Per TMZ Sports, two prominent auctioneers value the ball between $250,000 and $400,000.

Ken Goldin of Goldin Auctions was on the low end of that spectrum, estimating McGwire's then-record-setting ball to be worth $250,000 to $300,000.

David Kohler of SCP Auctions gave it the same minimum value but believed it could be worth up to $400,000.

McGwire hit two homers Sept. 27, 1998, to reach 70 for the season. Comic book creator and artist Todd McFarlane paid $3 million for the ball at an auction four months later, the highest sale price ever for a piece of sports memorabilia at the time.

Three years after McGwire set the MLB single-season home run record, Barry Bonds broke that mark by hitting 73 in 2001.

McGwire has also admitted to using steroids throughout his career, including during the 1998 campaign. The 12-time All-Star fell off the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in 2016 after receiving just 12.3 percent of the vote in his final year of eligibility.

The summer of 1998 was set up to be a home run race between St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and Seattle Mariners All-Star Ken Griffey Jr. as they both chased the record of 61 long balls in a season.

After all, McGwire hit 58 homers the year before, while Griffey drilled 56.

Instead, Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa was the one who battled McGwire all year. McGwire set the record with 70, while Sosa, who hit 36 home runs in 1997, finished with 66 as the National League MVP.

"What is meant to be is meant to be," Sosa said in ESPN's documentary Long Gone Summer (h/t Alex Shapiro of NBC Sports Chicago). "If it were meant to be Griffey, it would have been Griffey. But God picked me."

ESPN's documentary largely chronicled the joy that summer brought as fans flocked back to baseball after the work stoppage of 1994 soured the game for a number of people. That it was the leaders of the Cubs and Cardinals, two archrivals in the National League Central, only added to the drama as they both pursued Roger Maris' record.

While McGwire ended up with the most home runs, Sosa led the Cubs to the franchise's first postseason appearance in nine years.

McGwire's record didn't last long as San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs three years later in 2001.

That it was Bonds was notable because he, along with Sosa and McGwire, was linked to performance-enhancing drugs. While the trio largely defined baseball in that era, none of them are in the Hall of Fame because of those suspicions or connections.

ESPN's documentary also explored the PED side of the summer of 1998.

Unlike Sosa, McGwire and Bonds, Griffey, who hit 56 homers in 1998, avoided such connections throughout his playing career and in the aftermath.

Sosa may have been divinely chosen to compete with McGwire, but it is Griffey who is in baseball's Hall of Fame.

As Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa made their run at Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998, Big Mac thought he faced a higher level of scrutiny as the year unfolded.

The most recent installment in ESPN's 30 for 30 series, Long Gone Summer, focused on the '98 home run race, which pitted McGwire and Sosa in a head-to-head battle. During the documentary, McGwire said, "All the pressure was on me."

The former St. Louis Cardinals slugger also recounted how he had once described himself as a "caged animal," which didn't go over well at the time.

Mark McGwire said all the pressure was on him, not Sosa.

'Long Gone Summer' @30for30 premieres at 9 PM ET on ESPN. pic.twitter.com/1mfhbDONfM

— 30 for 30 (@30for30) June 14, 2020

McGwire was the first to best Maris' mark when he hit his 62nd homer on Sept. 8, 1998.

He and Sosa finished with 70 and 66 home runs, respectively. McGwire's record stood for only three years, as Barry Bonds hit 73 homers in 2001.

The added pressure McGwire felt was likely a product of his track record. He was the Rookie of the Year in 1987 when he led MLB with 49 homers, which was the most ever for a first-year player until Aaron Judge had 52 in 2017.

McGwire had also slammed 58 dingers in 1997, when he split the season between St. Louis and the Oakland Athletics.

Sosa, on the other hand, was more of a fresh face on the national stage. The Chicago Cubs right fielder had never hit more than 40 home runs over a season and was an All-Star once—McGwire had nine All-Star appearances under his belt—prior to 1998.

For most of that campaign, Sosa was the underdog in the home run race too.

These three were hitting homers whenever they wanted back in 1998.

'Long Gone Summer' from @30for30 premieres tonight at 9 PM ET on ESPN. pic.twitter.com/t1DdyjS2Kn

— ESPN (@espn) June 15, 2020

Of course, the narrative around 1998 shifted in the ensuing years as that season got subsumed by the larger steroid era.

As the wait for MLB to start the 2020 season continues, baseball fans have a reason to be excited in Sunday's premiere of Long Gone Summer on ESPN.

The latest 30 for 30 documentary chronicles the 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs and their efforts to be the first to break Roger Maris' single-season home run record.

Maris' record of 61 homers was set in 1961; he and Babe Ruth (1927) were the only players in MLB history to hit at least 60 homers in a single season until 1998.

                           

'Long Gone Summer' Viewing Information

Date: Sunday, June 14

Start Time: 9 p.m. ET

Network: ESPN

Live Stream: ESPN online

                  

Preview

In an interview with Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, Long Gone Summer director AJ Schnack discussed why he wanted to tell this story:

"I knew that neither Mark nor Sammy had really talked at length about that summer and certainly not together for the same project. So to get them both to reflect was incredible. When I started, it was about 20 years since that had happened. But obviously the story around that summer is a little bit cloudier now. And what's interesting to me was to try to say, OK, we know a lot about what happened in baseball during the steroid era. But can we go back and show what that summer really felt like? Because if we don't put you back in that moment in time, it's pretty easy to just think of it as something either everybody knew or everybody thought about at the time as opposed to the reality of what it was like as it was happening when we were in it."

One important thing to note going in is the documentary isn't going to have a heavy focus on performance-enhancing drugs.

Per Sports Illustrated's Paul Banks, PEDs aren't mentioned until roughly 90 minutes into the 103-minute movie, and "McGwire again comes clean and owns up while Sosa remains evasive and stubborn."

The summer of 1998 was a crucial moment in time for Major League Baseball. The league was still rebuilding itself with fans who left following the cancellation of the 1994 World Series because of a player strike.

Per Baseball Reference, the average attendance for games from 1995-97 was 26,469 compared to 31,256 during the season prior to the strike.

When the 1998 season started, McGwire was widely viewed as the most likely player to break Maris' record, having hit 58 homers between the Cardinals and Oakland Athletics in 1997. His main competition in the race going into the year was Ken Griffey Jr., who was the AL MVP after hitting 56 homers for the Seattle Mariners in 1997.

Sosa had never hit more than 40 home runs in a season coming into 1998 and only had 13 through the first 52 games of the season. Slammin' Sammy put himself in the race with 20 homers in June, setting an MLB record for most home runs a calendar month that still stands.

The back-and-forth chase between McGwire and Sosa played a huge role in MLB's resurgence in popularity. Average attendance at games in 1998 was 29,030, the third-highest of any year in the decade after 1994 (31,256) and 1993 (30,964).

McGwire came out on top in the home run chase, hitting the record-breaking 62nd homer on Sept. 8 against the Cubs. He finished the season with 70, a record that stood until 2001 when Barry Bonds hit 73.

Sosa finished 1998 with 66 homers and was named NL MVP after leading the Cubs to their first playoff appearance since 1989.

Major League Baseball fans who are dreaming of the day they get to see home runs all over highlight reels again will get a slight reprieve from the league's hiatus Sunday, June 14, with 30 For 30's "Long Gone Summer." 

The ESPN documentary revisits the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and it gets ready to premiere as MLB and its players union continue to negotiate a return-to-play plan amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

On Saturday, the network offered a first look at the film, dropping a nearly 90-second trailer that features Sosa and McGwire—two sluggers from contrasting backgrounds who became baseball's biggest stars while battling for its most hallowed mark: the single-season home run record. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwqXDUgsK78

That Sosa and McGwire's race to hit more than 61 homers in a season came during the height of baseball's steroid era now clouds what was one of the more epic years in league history—one that saw McGwire hit 70 home runs and Sosa 66.

McGwire said near the end of the clip he was "born to hit home runs," but the crux of the documentary can be summed up by announcer Bob Costas' remarks.

"People were desperate for a feel-good story," Costas said. "In retrospect, there was a price to pay for it."

The Last Dance won't be the last documentary series aired by ESPN in the coming months. 

ESPN announced on Tuesday that the premiere dates have been moved up for three 30 for 30 series documentaries chronicling controversial cyclist Lance Armstrong, late legendary martial artist Bruce Lee and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

The first of the bunch will be Armstrong. Lance will air on May 24 and May 31 before the network transitions to Lee's Be Water documentary on June 7. The final premiere will be Long Gone Summer on June 14.

Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports reported the following about the McGwire-Sosa feature: "[It's] about McGwire and Sosa's quest to topple Roger Maris's single-season home run record in the summer of 1998. ESPN says it will include interviews with both McGwire, who has admitted his use of performance-enhancing drugs, and Sosa, who has never come clean."

Long Gone Summer filmmaker AJ Schnack commented on the news:

Thrilled that this news is finally public.

Long Gone Summer, my new nonfiction feature on the 1998 Home Run Chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, is coming next month to @espn @30for30.

It's been a huge joy to get to make this movie and I can't wait for y'all to see it. pic.twitter.com/vWb61It2Ub

— AJ Schnack (@ajschnack) May 5, 2020

ESPN Executive Producer and Vice President of ESPN Films and Original Content Libby Geist provided a statement on the move:

"It's a great feeling to bring three more epic documentary projects to sports fans who so need it right now. Moving up these films is no easy task, but it's absolutely worth the effort to get them on the air for audiences to experience together. It's a mix of fascinating topics, compelling characters and some of the absolute best storytelling our team has cranked out. The whole ESPN Films team is working hard to entertain fans while we wait for live sports to return and give them a distraction while we go through these hard times."

Each documentary will air at 9 p.m. ET on its premiere date.

The Last Dance has become ESPN's most-watched documentary with an average of 5.8 million viewers across the first six episodes, per McCarthy. The 10-part docuseries provides an intimate, nostalgic look at Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls dynasty leading up to their sixth and final championship in 1997-98.

Barry Bonds' single-season record of 73 home runs has stood for 19 years. His career record of 762 home runs, for 13.

And counting. Possibly for a very long time.

As we continue with Steroid Week here at B/R, we're frankly not interested in relitigating how Bonds became the greatest home run hitter in the history of Major League Baseball. Specifically with regard to the 317 homers he hit between 2000 and 2007, it was part extraordinary natural talent and part performance-enhancing drugs. Regardless of how that makes you feel, that's the basic reality.

At this point, a more interesting question is whether the former San Francisco Giants slugger's signature marks of 73 and 762 will ever be broken. 

It's a safe guess they will be eventually, but the only basis for that is the notion that "records are made to be broken." At least on an individual level, the current state of baseball isn't conducive to new home run records. 

This might seem counterintuitive in light of how frequently balls were flying over fences in 2019. The season set a record with 6,776 total home runs, demolishing the old record of 6,105.

But unlike with the home run surges of the 1990s and early 2000s, this didn't happen because a select few guys suddenly hit a lot more home runs. Even in leading the league with 53 homers, Pete Alonso still finished 20 shy of Bonds' record. The dinger deluge was more of a group effort, as a record 129 players went deep at least 20 times.

That speaks to how, largely by way of recent advancements in batted ball data, swinging for the fences is now the default mode for many hitters. Yet the degree of difficulty for individual sluggers to separate themselves from the pack also speaks to how times have changed since 2001.

When Bonds hit 73 homers, it wasn't because he was bigger and stronger in 2001 than Mark McGwire was when he hit 70 in 1998. McGwire turned batted balls (simplified here to non-strikeout at-bats) into home runs at a 19.8 percent clip in '98. In '01, Bonds did it at a rate of 19.1 percent. 

The difference was that Bonds wasted fewer at-bats on strikeouts. Whereas McGwire whiffed 155 times in '98, Bonds fanned only 93 times in '01. He thus put more balls in play, which ultimately allowed him to leapfrog McGwire even though his batted balls didn't clear the fence as often.

This is not to suggest that Bonds was a particularly gifted contact hitter. For the 2001 season, his strikeout rate of 14.0 percent only tied for 70th among qualified hitters.

But if that strikeout rate were transported over to 2019, Bonds would have tied Anthony Rizzo and Nolan Arenado for 21st among qualified hitters. That's emblematic of how strikeouts have rapidly increased since 2001, which itself is part of a longstanding trend:

The rising tide of strikeouts hasn't altogether killed extreme home run seasons. To wit, there have been 12 seasons of 50-plus homers since 2001.

Yet the strikeouts do help explain why nobody has made it to even 60 home runs since 2001. Ryan Howard came close in 2006, but his 25.7 K% stopped him at 58 long balls. Giancarlo Stanton came even closer in 2017, but his 23.6 K% stopped him at 59.

Somebody like Cody Bellinger, who hit 47 homers with only a 16.4 K% in 2019, might have a shot at hitting 74 homers in a season. But even he would have to lower his strikeout rate and improve his efficiency at turning batted balls into homers. His homers-per-batted-balls rate in 2019 was only 10.4 percent, about half of what Bonds achieved in 2001.

So setting aside the possibility of some kind of messianic super-hitter coming out of nowhere, the eventuality of a 74-homer season hinges on changes to baseball's environment. Either the strikeout rate will have to come down or the home run rate will have to keep going up.

Frankly, these are hard things to count on.

The recent proliferation of home runs has almost certainly been born out of a juiced ball, and that experiment would be better ended than continued. De-juicing the ball could get hitters to change their habits and try to put more balls in play, but neither that nor any possible rule changes can undo arguably the biggest underlying reason for the rising strikeout rate: modern pitchers throw really hard.

But what of Bonds' all-time home run record?

To hit as many as 763 home runs, a hitter wouldn't have to hit 74 or more home runs in any single season. To wit, he would merely need to average 38 homers per season over a 20-year career. That's potentially doable even if the ball gets de-juiced and strikeouts continue to rise.

The key, however, would be for said hitter to age gracefully. That goes against another trend, in which younger hitters are more drastically outperforming older hitters in the 30-team era:

Jeff Zimmerman of FanGraphs was on this as far back as 2013, when he observed that the aging curve for hitters was shifting from generally being in favor of veterans to favoring up-and-coming 20-somethings. Obviously, not much has changed since then.

This partially comes down to how younger hitters are simply better than they used to be. But it's also reflective of how much harder it is for older hitters to stay relevant now that they don't have PEDs to fall back on as their bodies begin to break down.

Consider Albert Pujols. The 40-year-old has now played in more games after the age of 30 (1,424) than he did beforehand (1,399), but he hit 76 more homers in his 20s than he has since then. Even if the coronavirus hadn't come along this year, it's doubtful that he would have closed the gap between those two figures before his contract with the Los Angeles Angels ran out in 2021.

If there's hope for older hitters somewhere in the near future, it's the likelihood that the designated hitter will soon be universal. Just as it did for David Ortiz, Frank Thomas and Edgar Martinez, the position would help more hitters stick around if it indeed makes its way to the National League.

Otherwise, it's hard to imagine any upcoming developments that might make it easier for an older slugger to stick around long enough to break Bonds' career home run record. Somebody's basically going to have to be the next Hank Aaron, except better and longer-lasting.

This is where it's worth reiterating that 73 and 762 probably will fall eventually. Neither mark seems as wholly unbreakable as, say, Cy Young's 511 wins. There's also the reality that forever is a long time. It's hard to know what baseball is going to look like even 10 years from now, much less 20, 30, 40 and so on.

But ultimately, anyone who assumes Bonds' records will be broken shouldn't sit back and wait for that to happen. Chances are it's going to be a long wait.

     

Catch Up on B/R's Steroid Week:

Mon: McGwire vs. Sosa in '98

Tues: Will Bonds' Records Ever Be Broken?

Wed: Most Ridiculous Seasons of Steroid Era

Thurs: How A-Rod Survived Steroid Hell

Fri: Which Steroid Users* Should Be in HOF?

         

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs. Videos courtesy of MLB, via YouTube.