By Bernie Miklasz, St. Louis Post-Dispatch –
ST. LOUIS — The recent flurry of no-hitters and perfect games created a stir and prompted a frantic search for the meaning of it all. The 2012 baseball season is proclaimed as the “Year of the Pitcher.”
Hold on. In reality, the pitchers have been wrestling the game back from the hitters for several years. The no-hit gems and masterpieces are symbols of change.
“It’s fun to watch,” said Mark Mulder, the retired Oakland and St. Louis pitcher, now an analyst for ESPN. “Perhaps I’m biased, because I’m a pitcher. But I like seeing this. We’re going back to the earlier days of baseball, when pitchers had the chance to dominate.”
Major League Baseball is still loaded with potent, productive hitters. It’s not as if they’ve become extinct. Cincinnati’s Joey Votto leads a pack of hitters that are having spectacular seasons. Pitchers are hardly infallible. San Francisco’s Tim Lincecum, the two-time Cy Young award winner, has absorbed a series of beatings that have left him with a shockingly high 6.08 ERA.
Still, there’s been a gradual shift of power, with the pitchers fighting back.
Through Friday, the 30 MLB teams were averaging 4.30 runs per game. Over the past three seasons, teams have averaged 4.33 runs per game. During the three-season offensive peak of the so-called steroids era (1999-2001), the team average was 5.0 runs per game.
What about home runs? We still see plenty of them on ESPN SportsCenter. Well, truth is the sluggers aren’t launching as many bombs these days. Teams are averaging 0.95 homers per game in 2012, a drop from the HR Derby days of 1.14 homers per game between 1999-2001.
The MLB slugging percentage over the last three seasons is .401, a significant 32-point drop from the three-year slugging percentage (.433) between 1999-2001.
The MLB batting average (.253) is the lowest since 1972.
Strikeout rates are way up. Walk rates are down.
Going into Saturday’s schedule, 16 of the 30 MLB pitching staffs had ERAs lower than 4.00. In 2000, all 30 teams had an ERA over 4.00.
Is this a temporary rebellion, or a revolution that will have lasting impact? We can’t be sure. Baseball has always been cyclical, depending on factors that include rules changes, new-ballpark dimensions, equipment, and technology.
How do we explain the downturn of offense? Let’s review the theories:
Steroids
Bulked-up sluggers altered the baseball record book with a relentless attack of home runs. Pitchers undoubtedly tapped into the performance-enhancing drugs, but we’ll have to assume that hitters juiced earlier and often to gain a muscular advantage early on.
Responding to public pressure and threats from politicians, commissioner Bud Selig initiated a drug-testing program to catch and deter cheaters. The current testing system went into effect in 2005.
Home-run numbers and the runs-scored totals began to decrease in 2006. That’s no coincidence.
“Since drug testing was put in, things have changed,” Kansas City outfielder Jeff Francoeur said. “The game is different.”
The emergence of power pitchers
Cincinnati general manager Walt Jocketty told me teams put more emphasis on scouting, drafting and developing power arms as a way to counteract the steroids effect. The strategy appears to be working. Pitching staffs have powered up, and velocity is rising.
I studied the data at FanGraphs for the average speed of fastballs. (One note: no pitch-speed averages are available before 2002.) This season 32 starting pitchers are averaging 92 mph or better on fastballs. There were 39 starters that averaged 92 or more in 2010, and 39 starters reached that average last year. In 2002, only 16 starters averaged at least 92 mph. The count was 14 starters in 2003.
Moreover, there’s intense heat coming out of the bullpen. This season 45 relievers are averaging at least 94 mph with the fastball. That total was 48 relievers in 2010. But in 2002 and 2003, only 19 relievers averaged 94 mph each season.
As one scout for a major-league told me: the scouts used to see one or two guys in a rotation hitting 95 on the radar gun. Now it’s four or five. And the starters are followed by bullpen arms that throw just as hard, or harder.
It’s no surprise that the pitchers’ overall strikeout rate of 7.49 per nine innings this season is the highest in MLB history. In fact, the four highest season strikeout rates in MLB history have been posted over the last four seasons.
The sequence of the five highest strikeout rates by relievers in an MLB season began in 2008, with the percentage climbing to a record 8.26 Ks per nine innings this year.
Old-school baseball types are inexplicably baffled (and bothered) by the shortage of complete games by starters. There’s a simple explanation. Bullpens have been developed to the extent that it makes little sense to stay with a tiring starter. Bullpens present solutions with a diverse cast of sizzling fastballers, finesse artists, and matchup specialists. So why would a manager let his starter crash when he can bring in a better pitcher?
Variety of pitches
It’s more than just blowing fastballs by hitters. Pitchers are making devious use of cut fastballs (cutters), split-fingered fastballs (splitters), sliders and changeups. The variety complements the fastball, and pitchers short on velocity can compensate with a bag of tricks.
Pitchers can throw cutters for strikes on each side of the plate. They can throw the fastball up in the zone to get hitters to chase and miss. They throw hard sinkers to induce ground balls. They’re not afraid to throw sliders inside. They can fool a hitter with a standard changeup, or with a circle changeup.
“The pitchers’ repertoire is so much better these days,” Mulder said. “Hitters can’t lock in on anything.”
Plate discipline
Power-obsessed hitters are swinging like it’s 1999 and chasing balls out of the strike zone. According to FanGraphs, hitters are chasing out-of-zone pitches at a rate of 30 percent this season. That’s been increasing for years; as recently as 2004 hitters chased at a rate of 16 percent. That’s why walks are down. The 2012 on-base percentage (.319) is 26 points lower than the OBP in 2000.
Enhanced data and video study
The information age clearly benefits pitchers. They can rely on accurate charts that show a hitter’s weak spot, and hot spot. They have comprehensive stats that reveal how a hitter performs against each type of pitch. There’s no guesswork. There’s a clear plan of attack.
Pitchers benefit from dedicated training and improvements in sports medicine and therapy to extend and save their careers.
With amphetamines banned from the game, maybe every day position players are struggling to maintain energy. A starting pitcher has time to rejuvenate; he pitches every fifth day.
Whatever the reasons, it’s more of a fair fight in the pitcher vs. hitter conflicts. And at least some hitters are fine with that.
“That’s probably where it should be,” Votto said, speaking on Dan Patrick’s national radio show. “Everybody who followed baseball growing up know good pitching beats good hitting. That’s how it’s always been, and it’s back to where it (was).”
