Modern baseball players are bigger and stronger than any players in the history of the game (www.newswise.com). Increased knowledge about nutrition, more effective training methods, and major breakthroughs in sports medicine have combined to produce the best conditioned and cared for athletes who ever played the game. That is why today's players are the best ever. However, it is the pitchers, not the hitters, who have reaped the greatest benefits from being bigger and stronger, and it is the pitchers, not the hitters, who are the greatest ever.
The ability to throw an object with great speed is inherited. A person cannot be taught to throw a ninety five-mile an hour fast ball, but refining a pitcher's mechanics and delivery can maximize his inborn ability. Instead of throwing at a maximum speed of 88 miles per hour, the pitcher's fast ball may reach 91 or 92 miles per hour, but an ordinary person who throws a baseball at 65 miles per hour cannot be taught to throw it at 90 miles per hour. The ability to throw an object with great speed is inherited and each person has an upper limit that is genetically determined.
Hitting is different because it is basically a reflexive action. A batter sees a pitch and tries to hit it. The more time he has to see the pitch, the better are his chances of making solid contact. Reflexes are inherited. They are automatic, inborn responses to stimuli, which do not reach the level of consciousness (www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary). Little can be done to improve one's reflexes. No amount of coaching can increase a player's reflexes beyond their upper limit.
But hitting also involves conditioned reflexes. A conditioned reflex is a habit. Pavlov's dog associated the ringing of a bell with food. The presentation of food resulted in the dog salivating. After many repetitions, the dog associated the sound of the bell with food and salivated at the sound of the bell regardless of whether food was presented (www.epub.org).
Almost anyone who can hit a baseball can go to a batting range and hit a 90 mile an hour fast ball if every pitch is throw at the same speed and in the same location. Hitting a thrown ball is a habit or conditioned reflex. But few have the ability to hit that 90 mile an hour pitch if there is the possibility an 82 mile an hour change up or curve ball might be thrown instead of the fast ball. Once real pitching is involved, hitting depends primarily on inborn reflexes.
In the last few years, coaches and players have discovered that increasing body size and muscle mass can help a pitcher reach his full potential with respect to throwing hard. Adding mass and muscle and refining mechanics will allow a pitcher to "add" a few miles per hour to his fastball. Adding mass and muscle will allow a batter to get greater distance when he hits the ball.
But increased body size and muscle mass will not improve the chances of a batter making contact. That is a key point. It will increase power when solid contact is made, but solid contact must be made. The pitcher has the advantages of increased body size and muscle mass everytime he throws a fastball. The batter has those advantages only when he makes solid contact.
Since 1993, offense in baseball has exploded. University of Nebraska historians Ben Rader and Ken Winkle examined what they referred to as the "great hitting barrage of the 1990s." They hypothesized that the root causes of baseball's increased offensive production are the free-swinging hitting style, the fact that the pitcher can no longer pitch inside to the hitter, lighter bats, and stronger players (wwww.newswise.com). They should have added the fact that the strike zone is almost one-third smaller.
The statistics are mind-boggling. Major league batting averages increased by 10 points and runs per game rose from 8.6 to 9.2 from 1992 to 1993. Five players hit 40 or more home runs for the first time since 1969, which was the first season that the pitching mound was lowered from a height of 15 inches to 10 inches (www.historicbaseball.com)
From 1969 to 1993, the major leagues' composite batting average was .257. From 1994 to 1999, it was .281. Runs per 100 at bats increased from 12.4 to 14.3 and there was an accompanying rise in home runs per 100 at bats from 2.3 to 3.1, an increase of more than 33 percent (www.newswise.com).
A smaller strike zone and the fact that the pitcher no longer can pitch inside to the batter are major reasons for the increased offense. Baseball rules define the strike zone as ".that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hallow beneath the knee cap" (www.mlb.com).
Respected baseball expert Frank Deford has written that the upper part of the strike zone has disappeared completely (www.sportsillustrated.cnn.com). About one third of the area a batter had to defend no longer needs defending. The enormity of that change cannot be overemphasized. Batters now ignore any pitch above the belt and swing as hard as possible at lower pitches.
Logic dictates that taking the "high strike" away from the pitcher helps the batter. It also partially negates the fact that pitchers throw harder than ever because batters do not have to offer at 95-mph fast balls above the belt. Batters "zone in" on pitches at or below the belt and pitchers tend to stay away from pitching high in the strike zone because they don't want to fall behind in the count.
Tom Seaver is an excellent example. Seaver had a high rising fast ball that started out a little above the batter's belt and kept rising. Most batters could not catch up to it but had to offer at such pitches. If Seaver were pitching today, he would have to adjust to the smaller strike zone and would be a different pitcher.
Dwight Gooden threw as hard as Seaver, but his fastball was most effective at or below the batter's belt. Most of his strikeouts came from excellent ball movement in the lower part of the strike zone. The smaller strike zone would affect Gooden less than Seaver, but most elite fast ball pitchers are more effective high in the strike zone.
Today, few elite pitchers pitch high. Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Tim Hudson, Kevin Brown, Mariano Rivera, Billy Koch, Billy Wagner, Armando Benitez and even Randy Johnson pitch low in the strike zone most of the time. All of the above throw (or did throw at one time) as hard as any pitchers in the history of the game, and there are many more hard throwers who are less well known who would be much more effective if the rule book strike zone were respected.
If today's pitchers had the "high strike," offensive production would approach the low points of the middle and late 1960s. In 1968, the "year of the pitcher," National League teams averaged 3.43 runs per game and a batting average of .243. American League teams averaged 3.41 runs per game and a batting average of .230 (www.baseball-reference.com). That is incredible.
Baseball reacted by lowering the height of the pitching mound from 15 inches to 10 inches. The result was increased offensive production since the pitcher's leverage was decreased, as was the speed of his fastball. Imagine how a one third increase in the height of the pitching mound would affect pitchers today.
Combine just those two factors---pitches above the belt are balls and the pitcher throws from a lower mound---and hitting records that have stood for decades have been broken and broken again. Sixty home runs in a single season was a record that stood from 1927 to 1998. Since 1998, Sammy Sosa has hit more than sixty home runs in a single season three times, Mark McGwire has done it twice, and Barry Bonds did it once, smashing McGwire's record seventy by three.
No one can deny that Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire are great power hitters. No one has attempted to deny that Ruth, Maris, Foxx, Greenberg, Kiner, Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Gehrig, and Williams were great power hitters. One cannot but wonder how many home runs the latter would have hit if they faced the same pitchers of their era with the modern strike zone or how many the former would have hit if they batted with the rule book strike zone. Interesting thought.
References:
http://www.newswise.com/articles/2001/4/BASEBALL.NEB.html
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n09/mente/pavlov_i.htm
http://www.historicbaseball.com/pitching.html
http://www.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/baseball_basics/mlb_basics_define_terms.jsp
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/deford/news/2001/03/28/deford_insider/
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL_1968.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL_1968.shtml
» Harold Friend is a Yankees fan who thinks that the hitter Jason Giambi resembles most is Mickey Mantle.
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Posted June 19, 2002.
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