August in Chicago generally kicks off with Lollapalooza, a music festival in Grant Park that takes over the city for a few days each summer. This year the Cubs decided to close out August with Home Run Palooza at Wrigley Field, capping off a historic month that saw them grab the National League record for home runs in a month as they hit a franchise high nine home runs against the Brewers at Wrigley Field on Monday night [VIDEO]
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were back-to-back jacks, Alex Bregman had a three-home run night. And as soon as the Brewers had a chance to put a position player in the game Andrew Vaughn was on the mound, hitting Miguel Amaya with a pitch Statcast categorized as a knuckleball and mixing in an eephus for good measure. In fact, three of the Cubs’ nine long balls came off the Brewers first baseman which has me wondering, are home run records really what they used to be?
Cubs fans have seen a movie like this before, and not all that long ago. On July 1 they welcomed the Padres to Wrigley with an eight-run barrage that tied the previous franchise record they’d set just a year earlier. And yes, the Cubs hit a number of their homers to open July against a Padres position player [VIDEO].
No shade to Dansby Swanson or Alex Bregman, who went to the plate swinging with three-home run games on the line in the July and August affairs. That competitive fire whether they were facing a major league starting pitcher or a backup 1B/C in Vaughn or Rodolfo Durán is the stance you want from players setting the tone in the Cubs clubhouse everyday. When contract negotiations come up, no one cares whether your 20th home run was off a pitcher or a position player. The Cubs poured it on and posted scores against the Padres and Brewers that would have made the Chicago Bears proud, and I didn’t realize it until last night but this meme was made for the Cubs setting a franchise home run record:
But it does seem worth reflecting on the fact that the Cubs repeated assault on their franchise home run mark coincides with an increase in mangers opting for position players throwing batting practice rather than burning their bullpen in a blowout. They originally tied the seven home runs in a game mark on August 1, 2023 against the Cincinnati Reds and, you guessed it, the last two home runs came off backup catcher Luke Maile [VIDEO].
I get it. Managers are reticent to use their bullpen pitchers in a pointless effort. But it does seem worth reflecting on the fact that home runs feel a bit more special when they are being hit off a guy who isn’t throwing batting practice. Last year Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs took a look at the rise in position players pitching, which really peaked in 2022 but has been back on the rise:
From 2016 to ’18, the rate of PPP appearances more than doubled, and it continued to rise, with a localized peak during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. That peak happened as Major League Baseball and the Players Association agreed to waive a couple of rules that had been introduced in February, one that limited teams to carrying 13 pitchers on their 26-man rosters and another that limited them to using position players to pitch only in extra innings, or in games where the score margin is more than six runs. Somewhere between MLB’s announcement of the rule and the publication of that year’s official rulebook, the language was revised to include score margins “equal to or more than” six runs. The waiver continued through 2021 and into the start of the ’22 season, which was delayed due to the owners’ lockout. Teams were allowed to carry 28 players through May 1, after which rosters were reduced to 26; at that point the six-or-more-runs requirement finally went into effect, but not until May 30 were teams limited to 13 pitchers on the 26-player roster.
Given the expanded rosters, just seven position players pitched between Opening Day and May 1, 2022, but once rosters were trimmed from 28 to 26, even with the six-or-more-runs rule, the floodgates opened, with 124 more PPP appearances through the rest of the season. The record-high seasonal rate of 0.82% of relief appearances made by position players was more than double what it had been in 2018 and more than five times what it had been in ’16. The rules were revised for 2023, limiting PPP appearances in the ninth inning or earlier to those where a team trailed by eight or more runs, or, for the ninth, leading by 10 or more runs; even then, the rate of PPP appearances was higher than it had been in any year prior to 2022.
Position players are playing more in blowouts, but they aren’t necessarily causing the homerun barrage in some of those blowouts. MLB published a list of the teams who have hit nine or more home runs in a game in big league history. Yes, three out of five of those games occurred since 2025, however, the only team that faced a position player during one of those games was last night’s Cubs team. It’s just as likely that these games are more frequent simply due to teams selecting for home runs as they make roster decisions.
Regardless of the cause, the Cubs made history last night. And if you’re one of the people who’s worried these feats are cheapened when they occur against a first baseman with a 45 MPH knuckleball, at least we’ll always have last year’s game on the Fourth of July that set the franchise record at eight. Those fireworks came against the St. Louis Cardinals and three bona fide pitchers in Miles Mikolas, John King and Matt Svanson [VIDEO].
