Despite the fact that Shohei Ohtani has remained as MLB’s home run leader for multiple weeks, several players have closed the gap that existed, which gives a special and much-needed flavor to the last month of the season.
Every year it has been frequent to hear people who say (among which I sign up) that a season of 162 games is excessively long for Big leagues. The physical and mental exhaustion of the athletes is evident and paraphrasing Mookie betts, prior to the 2018 postseason that would end up winning Boston Red Sox “We all arrived with some ailment in the last month of the campaign”.
For fans, due to the same day-to-day obligations, it can be tedious to strictly monitor what happens during 162 games from MLB, which causes any unusual situation to quickly attract attention. 2021 has been full of interesting stories, but one that could take over the final month of the season is the home run “competition” between the top leaders in the department.
Shohei ohtani (42 homers) by Los Angeles Angels, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (39) of Toronto blue jays, Salvador Perez (38) of Kansas City Royals and Fernando Tatis Jr. (36) from San Diego Padres, are the four players who compete for the title of “King of the Home Runs”For 2021 and the race has been more than impressive thus far.
Do youWhat makes this career interesting? The first thing is that the dispute occurs between four players born outside the United States, a Japanese, a Venezuelan and two Dominicans. The second is that, although the “competition” does not have the magnitude of what happened in 1998 between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, the presence of young players, especially two (Tatis Jr. and Ohtani) who are competing for the title of the new face of baseballIt is appealing, especially for young audiences who did not experience that epic contest of the late 90s and third all baseball fans love home runs.
In a season where offensives have been conspicuous by their absence, in general terms, where as a collective, the thirty teams hit .242, with an OPS of .724 and average 160 home runs per set, numbers that are below what was seen in 2019 (AVG .252, OPS. 758), it is invigorating to see three youngsters and a veteran take over the stage with a home run competition that aims to be the most interesting of the last month of the season.
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