Juiced baseballs and the season home run record ... in Japan.

Barry Bonds may have been juiced when he set the season home run (HR) record with 73 in 2001 but not the baseballs.  At least as far as we know.  But this season, in Japan, the HR record will probably be broken with HR up 40% across the board in about the first 60 games and the league admitting that the baseballs were intentionally made more lively during those games.

The New York Times has this fact buried in an otherwise very interesting article that misses the big story: the juicing of the baseball.

Deference to a Revered Record in Japan Is Going, Going ...
By HIROKO TABUCHI and JOSHUA HUNT
Published: September 5, 2013 in The New York Times

TOKYO — For decades, the Japanese have called Sadaharu Oh the world’s true home run king. With 868 career home runs and many other hitting records to his name, Oh, now 73, is worshiped here as much as Babe Ruth is in America...

Oh’s hallowed mark of home runs in a single season, 55 ...

the slugger who might soon usurp Oh ... Wladimir Balentien, from a tiny island in the Caribbean... (hit) 52nd home run of the season last week for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows ... , which languishes in last place in Japan’s Central League ... With ... 26 games left in the season ...

Oh, though born in Japan, is a Taiwanese national, a fact often lost in the praise still piled on his celebrated career...

Fans now boo pitchers who appear to be shying away from throwing Balentien strikes...

“I think the Japanese learned something when they saw that the Americans didn’t prevent Ichiro (Suzuki) from breaking any of their records,” Robert Whiting ...

Foreign-born players’ efforts to break Oh’s record date back to Randy Bass, a former Minnesota Twins first baseman who joined the Hanshin Tigers in 1983. In 1985, as Bass surged toward his 55th homer, he was repeatedly walked ... Bass’s treatment came to highlight Japanese protectionism ...

American Tuffy Rhodes and the Venezuelan Alex Cabrera matched Oh’s record, in 2001 and 2002, respectively, but were stopped short of No. 56.
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Great story, right?  But here is the key fact buried about two thirds of the way down:

Balentien can expect his share of skepticism over his performance this season. A scandal erupted earlier this season after the national Nippon Professional Baseball league admitted it had quietly juiced up the official ball for greater bounce off the bat. Players in Japan had unknowingly used the juiced ball in nearly 60 games, with home runs increasing by more than 40 percent from the previous year by the time the changes were revealed.
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Unfortunately, the writers do not indicate how many of Balentien's HR were hit with the juiced baseball.  I am not familiar with the relationship between the Central League and "the national Nippon Professional Baseball league".  I'm guessing from the context that the Central League is subordinate.

2013 Japan Central League stats:

Balentien's team (Tokyo Yakult Swallows:  45-70) has played 115 games.  The Times states that there are 26 games remaining.  baseball-reference.com states that the 2012 season was approximately 144 games.  I guess in Japan they are not as as anal as we Americans about finishing all the games even if it means playing in terrible weather and abusing fans and players with three hour rain delays.  Plus, in some cases the Japanese games must end by a certain time so that fans can catch the last departing train home.

Here is the link for Balentien's stats in Japan:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/japan/player.cgi?id=balent001wla

2011	486	31	0.0638
2012	353	31	0.0878
2013	356	52	0.1461

Obviously Balentien's HR rate (at bats (AB) divided by HR) is much better in 2013.  In only three more AB than 2012, Balentien has hit 68% more HR.

The Times states that Balentien "missed the season’s first 12 games with an injury".  That means that he batted against juiced baseballs in roughly team games 13 through 60: about 48 games.  Since his team has played 115 games Balentien has probably played in team games 13 through 115: 102 games.  Since he's homering in about one of two games he probably hit about 24 HR in games with juiced baseballs.  If HR hitting was up 40% for all batters before the juiced baseballs were replaced with regular baseballs, we can reasonably assume that Balentien benefited by about 40% during the 48 or so games he played against juiced baseballs.  The problem is that we don't know how many HR he actually hit in those 48 games but let's go with the rough estimate of 24.  That means that 9 or 10 HR were added to his total.  Even with a more generous estimate of 8 extra juiced HR, any record set by Balentien would not be considered legitimate in the U.S. unless he shattered it by more than that amount, which might draw more of our suspicion.

Here in the good old USA we'd be all over this if it were happening in the Major Baseball League (MBL).  But for some reason the new found tolerance for non-Japanese baseball players in Japan seems to have subordinated this issue, at least as inferred by this one New York Times article.

Here the media and MBL commissioner Allan Huber "Bud" Selig have us chasing our tails over the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PED), which are not mentioned in the Times article.  I guess they test in Japan but who the heck knows?

Regarding one of the main points of that article, the hero worship of a baseball icon, I can remember my own ambivalence at age 13 in 1961 when two Yankees, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, threatened the unbreakable record of 60 HR in a 154 game regular season set by Babe Ruth in 1927.  It just didn't seem right for that record to be broken, not even by my favorite player: Mickey Mantle.  And the 154 game wall was firmly set back then and we all knew that Maris had to exceed 59 HR by then for his achievement to be legitimate.  Maris knew it, too, but Roger failed, as have all who played here without PED.

It's interesting that in Japan the home run is what makes Oh the big deal that he is.  Here it is the same with Ruth.  So while there are cultural differences in how we feel about records, the records that we cherish are the same type, just by different players.