(Photo Credit: Nick Wass, AP)

The latest updates from Major League Baseball

There are no furious pennant races in Major League Baseball, where the smallest division lead is four games.

There is no joy in Detroit, Miami, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, where teams mired in misery draw few fans.

But there are lots of home runs. Boom. A swing, a line drive, a run.

MLB set a record for HRs on Wednesday night, beginning the night 22 short of the 2017 season mark of 6,106 and finishing at 6,125. The actual record-breaker came from the bat of the Orioles’ Jonathan Villar, whose team has surrendered a record 280 homers.

Villar said afterward that “it’s not just for me, it’s for the team.” This is a lovely sentiment, except the team is 47-98 (a winning percentage of .324) and trails the American League East leader, the New York Yankees, by 47 ½ games. On the positive side, they’ve equaled last year’s win total. Villar’s bat is bound for the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the appropriate veneration.

We’ve had the discussion here how home runs and strikeouts dominate baseball and how building a run the old-fashioned way – a single, a hit and run, a sacrifice bunt – no longer exists in a world of free swingers and power pitchers. We won’t revisit it.

For the “dig the long ball” crowd, we’ll give you a few notes:

• The Yankees, who were rained out Wednesday night, are second in the majors with 276 home runs and that is with Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 59 homers for Miami in 2017, having one in the nine games he has played this season. He may be able to return from his collection of injuries next week. The Yankees set a record by homering in 31 consecutive games earlier this season. The Minnesota Twins lead all of baseball with 277 HRs.

• The Seattle Mariners homered in 20 straight games to open the season, a record. The Mariners, occupants of last place in the AL West, trail the Houston Astros by 34 ½ games.

• If you want to see four of the home run leaders in action in the postseason, good luck. New York Mets rookie Pete Alonso has 47, but the Mets are two games out in the wild-card chase. The Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout has hit 45 HRs, but the Angels won’t be seen after the early days of October. And Christian Yelich (knee injury) won’t be there if the Milwaukee Brewers make it. Yelich has 44, as does Eugenio Suarez of the Reds, who will miss the playoffs for a sixth straight season.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman