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The past four seasons have produced a noteworthy explosion of home run bashing on the baseball-mad island of Cuba, and the current campaign has witnessed little falloff from the recent trend. In view of such a seemingly unparalleled string of new long-ball records (and also in light of the fact that while Alfredo Despaigne was outpaced by Abreu and Céspedes a year ago, the Granma slugger only actually played two-thirds of a full season), my colleague Ray Otero and I (even as early as last December) have been actively discussing possibilities that a healthy Alfredo Despaigne might accomplish the once-unthinkable feat of topping the 40-homer mark during National Series #51. Despaigne’s recent ten-day and seven-game long-ball drought has now posed some serious obstacles to such phenomenal production. Nonetheless, our bold prediction is still not entire outside the realm of possibility.

On Saturday afternoon in Bayamo, in the seventy-third game of National Series #51, Alfredo Despaigne crossed the 30-homer plateau for the third time in his still young career. Four other Cuban sluggers own 30-plus homer seasons in the National Series play: José Dariel Abreu twice (33 in 2011, 30 in 2010), Alexei Bell (the first, with 31 in 2008), Yulieski Gourriel (30 in 2010), and Yoennis Céspedes (33 in 2011) have also accomplished the prodigious feat. Despaigne’s most recent landmark blast came at slugger-friendly Mártires de Barbados Stadium in the form of a second-inning grand slam clout served up by Guantánamo Indios ace hurler and fellow national team regular Dalier Hinojosa. One day later number 31 was struck in the fifth frame off a delivery from another veteran national teamer, Ciro Silvino Licea.

With 22 games still remaining in this year’s newly elongated 96-game campaign, Despaigne still seems a virtual lock to pass last season’s high-water mark of 33 dingers shared by Abreu and Céspedes. His seven-game slump (filled with numerous walks by wary enemy pitchers) over the past ten-day road swing (to Santiago and Ciego de Avila) has now admittedly lowered previous expectations for reaching the coveted 40 figure. With perhaps 75-95 Abs remaining and with Despaigne currently averaging a circuit blast for every 8.68 Abs, a slim chance nonetheless does remain that the heralded number might fall during the last few games of the campaign. (While post-season homers oddly contribute to the lifetime Cuban League stats, they do not figure into single-season totals. Single-season records must he achieved outside of playoff action.) If we assume only 75 more at-bats and merely one circuit blast in every ten Abs then the final total would represent a slight shortfall – with perhaps 37 or 38 round trippers.

Given this reality that Despaigne has now already pushed his long-ball total above 30 with a full month of the campaign yet remaining, it would appear that he is slugging the light Mizuno ball at a rate previously unprecedented in league annals. Closer examinations of the historical home run records surprisingly do not bear this out, however. Last season, for example, Despaigne socked only 27, but it must be remembered that he suited up for a mere 67contests; he had spent the first month of the campaign visiting South Africa as part of a Cuban delegation to the World Youth Congress. Abreu, for his part, set the current record last winter in even fewer appearances still. Abreu played in only 66 contests as a result of nagging minor injuries and was limited to only 212 Abs – a result of both his frequent spells of the disabled list and numerous walks (58, nearly one per game) from timid pitchers when he did play. In brief, Despaigne is now slugging at a frequency only slightly ahead of last year’s rampage, and he is actually behind last winter’s record pace by set by Abreu. Abreu’s 1/6.42 home run ratio of 2010-11 is itself only the second best ever posted in National Series action, having been bested more than two decades back by Orestes Kindelán.

Despaigne’s own pace so far this season (if maintained across the next month) leaves him only twelfth-best on the all-time chart for single-season frequency. A ratio of better than one home run in every ten official hacks at the plate has actually been achieved on twenty different occasions in National Series play, and by eight different sluggers. The huge disclaimer here, however, is that only four (Abreu, Despaigne, Juan Carlos Pedroso and Antonio Muñoz) have achieved their stellar productions with wooden bats, a very significant difference to be sure. And it also has to be pointed out that only Abreu and Despaigne have maintained such a pace in seasons in which they have enjoyed well above 250 at-bats. Orestes Kindelán achieved his own unparalleled 6.36 ratio in the exceptionally brief 48-game National Series #27 (1987-88), doing so with a rather miniscule AB total of only 140. If Abreu also improves his current 2012 10.62 ratio (21 homers with 223 Abs on March 18) he could be the 21st player to enter what has now become a not-so-rare club for Cuban sluggers. All this is to suggest that current Cuban batsmen like Despaigne and Abreu are not actually breaking new ground but rather only continuing a long-standing Cuban League pattern. Despaigne may soon outstrip the current league record for one-year dingers by a hefty margin, but he won’t come close to equaling the frequency marks of either Abreu or half-a-dozen other Cuban stalwarts from the aluminum-bat epoch (1976-2000).

Parallel home run slugging frequency is not entirely unprecedented in major league seasons (for all the MLB claims to better pitching), but it is far less common. For sake of comparison here it might be noted that Barry Bonds checked in with a 1/6.52 ration when he hit his MLB-record 73 dingers in 2001, while Mark McGwire was not far behind at 7.27 in 1998 (70 homers). Earlier pre-steroid-era record holders Babe Ruth and Roger Maris also banged homers at a rate better than one in every ten Abs: Ruth at 9.00 (60 HRs in 1927) and Maris at 9.67 (61 HRs in 1961). None of the big leaguers have matched Kindelán or Abreu, but of course Abreu played a much shorter season (only 40% of a normal big league campaign) and Kindelán benefitted from those aluminum rocket launchers that probably added a bigger assist that any human growth hormones.

Such highly productive home run hitting of course rarely holds up over a full multi-season career and thus when it comes to longevity none of the top Cuban sluggers have yet matched the true reigning king – big leaguer Babe Ruth. Romelio Martínez is the unsurpassed overall career leader in Cuba, followed by another aluminum bat king, Kindelán. But Despaigne trails only a shade behind these past-era heroes with his own productivity now progressing by leaps and bounds in the middle segment of his celebrated career. And Despaigne remains the only Cuban Leaguer with a ratio under 1/14.00 to emerge from the wooden-bat era of the past decade. If Abreu has been slightly more productive in the past couple of winters (perhaps largely because he receives more free passes from intimidated hurlers), he trails not only Despaigne but also still-active Joan Carlos Pedroso when it comes to modern-era rivals. Abreu got off to a rather slow start as a still-developing teenager in his first several seasons – it took him until the early part of his fifth reason before he amassed his first 30 career dingers. Despaigne also started modestly (44 homers in his first three campaigns), although not as slowly as Abreu. Such slow starts result directly from the fact that promising young Cuban ballplayers enter the top league much earlier than major leaguers who usually undergo several mandatory season of minor league training. Despaigne entered National Series action at age 18; Abreu was only 16 when he made is first handful of rookie appearances; Omar Linares entered the league at the remarkable age of fifteen.

The unprecedented Cuban slugging explosion began with Alexei Bell back in 2008, a campaign when the Santiago “Toy Cannon” became the first to cross the 30 plateau in a single National Series winter season. Injuries have since short-circuited Bell, but others paced by Abreu and Despaigne have kept the new record onslaught alive during each subsequent season. A year after Bell, Despaigne went one better at 32. Then in 2010 three musclemen battled to the wire, Despaigne, Abreu and Yulieski Gourriel all reaching 30 on the final weekend of NS#49. Last year Abreu and Céspedes erased Despaigne’s mark by a pair, but did so perhaps only because Despaigne remained on the sidelines for the first full month. Of course it must also be noted that Abreu actually played even less last winter than Despaigne (due to injury) and thus also logged twenty fewer plate appearances (due not only to the periodic stints on the sidelines but also to a substantial number of free passes). Abreu didn’t establish a new league standard for total bases on balls, but none have ever walked more in the Cuban League with fewer trips to the plate.

There has been considerable speculation about the reasons for this renewed home run explosion in Cuban stadiums. Of course, as already noted, it is not at all the sharp departure that some might assume simply because of the plus-30 totals now being posted. Slightly longer seasons (than those of a couple decades back) and a fresh crop of especially talented athletes might be enough to explain the slight elevation in total numbers. Certainly there has been no hint here of performance-enhancing chemicals. This doesn’t happen anywhere in the communist nation (in any sport, including track and field) since Cuba is noted for its strict drug aversions on all levels of society. The baseball itself might be largely to blame, especially in light of the fact that the lively Mizuno 150 sphere in use over the past several years was so controversial it was finally replaced for the current campaign with a less rabbit-like Mizuno 200 version. And there is the even more plausible factor of the league’s severe imbalance in pitching. While a dozen or more top pitching prospects still grace the talented national team roster, players and fans alike bemoan the recent overall dip in Cuban League pitching talent. I have mentioned in earlier articles my discussions in 2011 with Frederich Cepeda, where the national team captain complained about a negative impact on Cuban batters in top national tournaments resulting from their facing so many inept league hurlers at home – unseasoned and less talented prospects whose fastballs top out at 85 mph and whose control problems (an inability to cut outside corners when they want to) leave better island hitters salivating.

Last season Céspedes was the first to reach the new standard of thirty-three, beating Abreu to the mark by a single day. However, league officials would ultimately recognize Abreu as the official record book title holder, due to a long-standing Federation policy of breaking ties in offensive categories on the basis of fewest official at-bats. “Piti” (Pea-Tea) Abreu also matched a league standard for home run productivity with better than one round tripper in every seven official batting chances, a feat earlier accomplished twice by Orestes Kindelán alone (but with aluminum weapons). Despaigne himself was not nearly as productive as Abreu but did produce at a better HR/AB ratio than his teammate Céspedes (9.67 to 10.72). Yoennis Céspedes, for his own part, enjoyed several distinct advantages over both Abreu and Despaigne when it came to long-ball slugging. Since he batted ahead of both Despaigne and also the muscular Yordanis Samon (21 HR, 76 RBI, .657 SLG) in the potent Granma lineup, Céspedes saw plenty of hittable pitches. Only five of his 49 free passes were intentional while Abreu was handicapped with a whopping 21 intentional free passes.

With the current season Despaigne has roared back in a gallant effort to reclaim his previous spot in the record books and also to leave little doubt about who is the league’s true home run “king of the hill.” Buy arriving at 31 dingers with 22 games still remaining Despaigne has now reached the coveted plateau faster than anyone (outside Kindelán) by a wide margin. (That is, if the measure is games remaining and not the number of game appearances; Abreu last year already had 33 by the time he reached Game 67 in his own campaign, but his thirtieth round tripper actually came in his team’s 85th contest, only five games before the end of the season. Céspedes also slugged number 30 in Granma’s game number 85.) For his part Abreu is not lagging that far behind this winter either; if he trails by 10 homers, the HR/AB ratio compared with Despaigne’s is not that different (Despaigne 8.68 to Abreu’s 10.62). Given more hittable pitches down the stretch and Abreu might still make a horse race out of the current home run title chase.

Numerous observations can be made about this season’s Despaigne home run onslaught. To follow such observations one can peruse the complete Despaigne home run log at the end of this article. The Granma “stallion” has so far produced his titanic blasts against every league team minus three – Oriente League rivals Las Tunas (with one three-game set remaining), Ciego de Avila and Santiago de Cuba (season series now complete with the latter two). He has been just as productive on the road (15) as in his admittedly tiny home park (16 home field homers, but only 15 in the bandbox Bayamo stadium). He has certainly not feasted off southpaws (only five), but then he doesn’t see many lefties in a league where “zurdos” are in admittedly short supply. His most productive months were January (10) and February (11) but he has had few dry spells all winter long (outside of one in late December and the one recently experienced in mid-March). The longest stretch between homers was the 13-game dry spell over the second half of December and the first week of January. His most productive inning has been the first (with 8 total round-trippers) and his longest consecutive-game homer streak has been five.

Regarding this season’s consecutive-game streak that stretched from Game 38 through Game 42, the first and second matches of that string were actually separated by six days as a result of two open dates plus a three-day stretch in which Granma was the unscheduled league team (this year’s unbalanced schedule requires one team to be idle for each series). Despaigne himself earlier homered in six straight matches during NS#48 (in six games between February 7 and March 31 of 2009 he belted 8 homers, at least one in each game). This was indeed a weird streak itself, since the first two games were separated from the last four by a six-week league hiatus due to the suspension of play for the second MLB “Clasico” tournament. The existing MLB record for homers in consecutive games remains 8 contests (and is shared by Dale Long in 1956, Don Mattingly in 1987, and Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993). MLB professional scouts working international tournaments have frequently told this writer that they prefer Despaigne by a narrow margin over Abreu and by a much wider margin over the now-departed Yoennis Céspedes. All three are seen as true professional league prospects and Céspedes upon his exit from the island quickly became subject of still another insane top-dollar bidding war before finally being inked by the Oakland A’s. But it is Despaigne who seems to have all the important intangibles and also most of the definable tangibles in the eyes of most experienced international baseball birddogs. As one top international scouting director (here unnamed) has told me on several occasions, Despaigne owns the more compact swing and the more explosive raw power. His swing is in fact near “picture perfect” and it advances more directly to the ball. And in the big-pressure tournament games he has always seemed to rise to the occasion when the big clutch hit is demanded (as demonstrated in the 2009 European World Cup and the dramatic confrontations with Team USA at the 2010 Tokyo World University Championships and again last October in Panama). But such professional opinions aside, when it comes down to comparison between Cuba’s” big three” home run producers of the past several years, it is Despaigne himself (with his renewed current on-the-field production) who seems to be making the loudest statement.





Peter C. Bjarkman is author of A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006 (McFarland, 2007) and is widely recognized as a leading authority on Cuban baseball, both past and present. He has reported on Cuban League action and the Cuban national team for www.BaseballdeCuba.com during the past five years and is currently completing a book on the history of the post-revolution Cuban national team.