My good friend Fred recently asked me to blog my opinion on the no hit explosion we saw earlier this year in baseball and how the "end" of the steroid era mat have effected this. I decided to give this some consideration before responding, so here goes.
It appears to me that while the PED's gave hitters more power, it gave a recuperative effect to pitchers. Hitters now have more warning track outs that were home runs in the steroid era. Balls are hit less sharply hit and more easily playable.
Just as important though is pitchers now rely less on power and more on location. I believe just trying to throw the cover off the ball every time led to more balls in play because hitters were more reliant on timing. This is why pitchers like Cliff Lee are so valuable now. The recuperative effect was also leaving pitchers in games longer. I feel this led to a bigger "crash" when they wore out. Now that low pitch count is the way to get deep into a game, only pitchers having days with a great combination of location and speed are lasting a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment