The Indians got no hit on Friday night by Wade Miley and the Cincinnati Reds. Miley’s no hitter was the second against Cleveland and the fifth on the major league season (yes I am counting Madison Bumgarner’s seven inning no-no. It’s not his fault the game ended early.)
Major League Baseball is on track to have close to 20 no hitters by the end of the season. Hell, we just had two in a week with John Means and Miley tossing history. The last time there was two no hitters in a week was 1990 when Dave Stewart and Fernando Valenzuela threw one in the same day. We have said for years that no hitters and perfect games are fluky, but there is more to five in a little over a month than a whimsical coincidence.
While I love watching phenomenal pitching, something needs to change because this game only works when neither the hitters nor the pitchers have an advantage.
Right now, the pitchers have a clear advantage.
Jayson Stark put out an awesome column laying everything out. If you have already committed to reading this schlock over Jayson’s beautiful prose, here is the basic thought. The batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage are in the toilet. The numbers have not been this low since 1968, when baseball had to lower the mound to level the playing field. The reason being again, the pitching is just fantastic.
As of May 8, hitters are hitting 233/310/391, which is just dreadful. Hits per game are down to dead ball era levels. The only thing that is up is home runs.
Now I know you are screaming, “It’s because these hitting are swinging out of their shoes and all they care about is launch angle and analytics!”
My polite answer to the screaming public is, sure, there is an element of truth to this, but I do not believe it is the main reason. It is a component to what is happening. Yes, we care less about strikeouts than ever and put a priority on hitting the ball hard in the air, but that is not the primary reason.
The main component is the pitchers are just flat out better than the hitters thanks to high speed cameras, increased bullpen velocity (aka fire breathing dragons coming out of the pen) and more information about hitters than ever before.
If you want proof of this, just go on Pitching Ninja’s twitter page and scroll. No one is hitting this stuff. He will show you how pitchers are tunneling pitches (tunneling pitches is the idea of making every pitch look the same for as long as possible) and getting more movement than ever. If you want more information on high speed cameras and how they are changing pitching, read this and if you enjoyed that piece, read The MVP Machine by Ben Lindburgh and Travis Sawchek. If you enjoyed both of those, congratulations you are officially a nerd! Please pick up your Elvis Costello glasses and pocket protector in the back of the hall.
So how do we level the playing field so the hitters have a chance?
I don’t think it is something we can completely fix during the season, but we may be able to duct tape, chewing gum and twine this bad boy together until we get to the offseason.
Here are a bunch of half baked ideas we can implement during the season. The higher on the list they are, the more committed I am to them.
Get rid of on field cheat sheets
Within the few years, we have seen a rise in cheat sheets on the field to instruct fielders where to stand for each hitter. You will see 7 guys reach into their pockets or check their hats and then move for the hitter. Catchers now have wristbands on their arms making them look like they were borrowed from NFL quarterbacks and the pitchers have cheat sheets in their hats, so each know how to attack every hitter. The advantage clearly falls to the pitcher when you have the MVP Baseball 05 cold and hot zone on the field with you.
Quick baseball video game top 5
1. MVP Baseball 05
2. Mario Superstar Baseball
3. Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball (N64)
4. Bases Loaded (NES)
5. MLB 2K1
Yes, I was a Nintendo kid. How did you know?
Anyway, there is no way for the hitters to have a scouting report for the pitcher on the field with them. This is an easiest solution that could help to level the playing field.
Checking the balls and the pitchers for foreign substances
Baseball is trying to police the amount of foreign substances on the ball by checking spin rate and the ball itself for anything suspicious.
The problem is if you are basing spin rate off of previous years and the pitcher has been doctoring the ball for years, it all looks the same. Add in that a ball is thrown by a pitcher, caught by a catcher, tossed to a bat boy, who gives it to the clubhouse attendant to place in the umpire’s room. There are a ton of variables and opportunities for shenanigans as the ball touches so many hands. Not the cheeky and fun ones either, evil shenanigans.
Sorry for the s-bomb Poobah. Still makes the column PG-13.
Maybe the solution is to inspect every pitcher like they are going through airport security for foreign substances. Maybe they get inspected before the innings starts? We can’t inspect the pitchers before every pitch, well unless it is done like this,
This mediocre column will never be above a good Looney Tunes reference.
The High Strike
The pendulum was at the complete other end of the spectrum a few years ago and the solution baseball put into place was to call the high strike again. The high strike is the strike over the belt. It worked, pitchers were able to get outs again and scoring went down. The problem is, now guys are just tossing high gas and the hitters are not catching up to it. Like everything in life, the solution to this can also be put on the hitters as well to choke up and level out the swing, but we both know the desired effect will not happen this season. These guys have taken years to hone their swings to perfection.
If we lower the strike zone by a quarter of an inch, we would end up with less called third strike and hopefully more balls put in play. Now, I have no idea how to implement this or police it, hence the half baked nature of this idea.
The interesting part of this is the ratings are up for MLB this season. MLB claims MLB.TV service saw more than 1.3 billion minutes of streams through the first three weekends of the 2021 season. They claim it is a 12 percent increase from 2020 and a 43 percent from 2019. Does this mean people like the pitching being better than the hitting? Is this the best version of baseball where runs are as rare as soccer goals? This could easily be a one month “Hurray! Baseball is back.” It could also be that people enjoy this version of the game and maybe nothing drastic needs to happen because people are happy.
I won’t lie, I have been watching wall to wall baseball since the season started and when I get the push notification on my phone of a potential no-hitter, I immediately flip over to that game. There is still something special about a no hitter. I just wonder what the casual fan is watching the game to see. Is it insanely good pitching or is it the ball being put in play?
Three Quick Thoughts
1. You don’t need me to tell you everything in Cleveland was a smashing success from the draft presentation to the Browns draft itself. You pulled off a party in a pandemic and your football team got a haul of players people seem to be impressed with. Well done Cleveland.
2. The goal of the NBA play in tournament was to have as many games matter as possible in April and they have accomplished that goal easily. I was glued to the Lakers vs. Blazers game Friday night to see if Lebron would have to deal with the thing he so openly loathed. It will be the NBA’s worst nightmare if the Lakers lost in the play-in tournament.
3. Horse racing? Corrupt? Get out of here!
