Jen
05-03-2001, 04:55 PM
Grand old game strikes new balance
Baseball blooms in April with new strike zone, competition
By Thomas Boswell
May 2 — It’s time to rejoice. Baseball has been saved.
Well, at least for one month.
In recent years, the sport has been dogged by two serious and mounting problems: lack of competitive balance and too many runs. The rich went to the playoffs; the poor stayed home. And, night after night, pitchers had little chance against hitters. Baseball’s statistical fabric, as well as its aesthetic balance, was in danger.
Last month, all that changed. Maybe it was an April mirage. Perhaps the high-payroll rosters will march to the top of the standings with depressing predictability. And another summer of four-hour slugfests, and warped offensive numbers, may blight the record book again. But that’s certainly not how it looks right now.
The meek, whether they be Twins, Cubbies, Phillies or Mariners, are inheriting first place. The sport’s biggest spenders — the Yankees, Braves and Mets — are all staggering with a combined record under .500.
Some of 2000’s biggest winners — like the division champion White Sox and Athletics — are among the biggest losers (16-32 combined, entering last night’s games). Sweetest of all, the Texas Rangers, who rabbit-punched the entire sport by signing Alex Rodriguez for $252 million, have exactly the record they deserve: 11-14.
Perhaps most important from a long-term perspective, the New Strike Zone, which is really just a proper enforcement of the Old Strike Zone, seems to be working to perfection. Runs-per-game have fallen from 10.3 to 9.6 — which is a tad high, but perfectly acceptable. Batting averages have fallen dramatically to .260 in both leagues. But home runs, the game’s sizzle, are unchanged. It’s a formula for excitement, an era when both power hitting and power pitching — fueled by the high-fastball strike — get their due.
Why, baseball has even brought back one of the game’s old staples — tons of games between arch rivals in the same division. For generations, divisional foes played each other 22 times a year. Nobody complained. By last year, that number had dwindled to 12 meetings a year between, for example, the Orioles and Yankees. Come on, that’s not enough! This year, the Orioles will meet division foes like the Yanks, Red Sox and Blue Jays, 19 times each, much like the old days.
Through much of the ’80s and into the early ’90s, baseball had a wonderful, but perplexing, kind of parity. Year after year, the postseason, and even the World Series, was populated by unexpected gate crashers. Nearly every team in the sport got its turn to win a pennant. For more than a decade, dollars hardly seemed to matter — free agency or not. A team could go from worst to first in a single year. And in 1991, both Series teams — Minnesota and Atlanta — did exactly that.
A World Series visit for the Phillies in ’93 seemed to exhaust the trend. Or, perhaps the baseball gods were so ticked off by The Strike in ’94 that the game was punished with another era of dynastic monotony. Yanks or Braves. Braves or Yanks. Yawn.
Recently, money has been buying happiness with alarming regularity. Within baseball, one side argued that cash would ultimately always be king. The game’s era of parity-despite-free-agency had been an accident. The other side, of which I’m a member, said, “Wait and see.” Money matters. The wealthiest teams will tend to win more, as they always have in baseball. But, perhaps, not a great deal more. Not intolerably more.
In baseball, more than any other major sport, first-rate management can finesse its way around sheer payroll size. And blundering brass can squander almost any edge in available funds. The ideal illustration is General Manager Pat Gillick. Look what happened to Seattle after he arrived. And Baltimore after he left.
The Mariners didn’t just lose A-Rod. Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson have also left town in the past two years. Has any team, since Connie Mack sold off his A’s in the Depression, lost three potential Hall of Famers so quickly while getting nothing in return? Yet Seattle, built around a young, power-pitching rotation, has the best record in baseball (20-5).
Last October, the M’s almost faced down the Yankee head-to-head. This year, even without Rodriguez, they may succeed. How’d Gillick do it? He got Freddy Garcia and John Halama in the Big Unit fire-sale trade. He swiped free agent Aaron Sele out from under the Orioles’ noses. Then, from Japan, he signed Kazuhiro Sasaki (37 saves last year) and seven-time Japanese league batting champion Ichiro Suzuki who, in his big league debut, is hitting .336.
Baseball can only hope this trend continues. The Twins seem to be winning with a bunch of guys with names like Doug Mientkiewicz. Yet no less an authority that Pedro Martinez says that the Twins (18-6) are “the best team we’ve played this year.”
That takes in some territory, since Pedro’s seen plenty of the stumbling Yanks (14-12) who, so far, resemble the aging club of last September more than the champs of October. Will Mike Mussina (1-3, 4.78 ERA) join nearly 25 years worth of jinxed free agent pitchers? Buy a hitter, get production. Buy a pitcher, get a headache.
If you want a shock, don’t look at the top of standings. Look near the bottom. The A’s and White Sox are so far behind already that any historian will tell you that their chances of repeating as division champs are almost nil. The Mets won the pennant last year; now they’re in last place. The implacably excellent Braves are under .500 and got swept by the feisty Phils of Larry Bowa.
While it’s quite possible that baseball’s high dollar franchises will crawl back up to the top, it’s doubtful that the game’s run totals will have a comparable recovery. The high strike is back. Sometimes it actually gets called. But, whether it is or not, the letter-high pitch is now back in the hitter’s subconscious. Umpires may be inconsistent at calling the new strike zone. But you only have to get called out a few times on pitches that used to be called balls before you subtly alter your hitting habits.
The American League has had a stunning drop of 16 points in batting average, from .276 to .260, while the NL was fallen six points from .266. Fewer men on base and fewer hits have led to fewer runs, even though homers have stayed at 2.3 per game.
Offensively, where are we now? Try the NL of 1953. Do you ever hear anybody criticize the days of Stan Musial, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Eddie Mathews, Gil Hodges and Ted Kluszewski? Were their records cheap? Well, they averaged 9.6 runs that season, the same as the current pace in both leagues.
A Cubs vs. Red Sox World Series? Maybe that’s dreaming. But what about a sport with more balance — between rich and poor teams and between hitters and pitchers? Now that’s a possibility. The game’s wealthy franchises and big hitters still have a decided advantage. But maybe it’s not so lopsided. That’s a trend worth rooting for all summer.
Baseball blooms in April with new strike zone, competition
By Thomas Boswell
May 2 — It’s time to rejoice. Baseball has been saved.
Well, at least for one month.
In recent years, the sport has been dogged by two serious and mounting problems: lack of competitive balance and too many runs. The rich went to the playoffs; the poor stayed home. And, night after night, pitchers had little chance against hitters. Baseball’s statistical fabric, as well as its aesthetic balance, was in danger.
Last month, all that changed. Maybe it was an April mirage. Perhaps the high-payroll rosters will march to the top of the standings with depressing predictability. And another summer of four-hour slugfests, and warped offensive numbers, may blight the record book again. But that’s certainly not how it looks right now.
The meek, whether they be Twins, Cubbies, Phillies or Mariners, are inheriting first place. The sport’s biggest spenders — the Yankees, Braves and Mets — are all staggering with a combined record under .500.
Some of 2000’s biggest winners — like the division champion White Sox and Athletics — are among the biggest losers (16-32 combined, entering last night’s games). Sweetest of all, the Texas Rangers, who rabbit-punched the entire sport by signing Alex Rodriguez for $252 million, have exactly the record they deserve: 11-14.
Perhaps most important from a long-term perspective, the New Strike Zone, which is really just a proper enforcement of the Old Strike Zone, seems to be working to perfection. Runs-per-game have fallen from 10.3 to 9.6 — which is a tad high, but perfectly acceptable. Batting averages have fallen dramatically to .260 in both leagues. But home runs, the game’s sizzle, are unchanged. It’s a formula for excitement, an era when both power hitting and power pitching — fueled by the high-fastball strike — get their due.
Why, baseball has even brought back one of the game’s old staples — tons of games between arch rivals in the same division. For generations, divisional foes played each other 22 times a year. Nobody complained. By last year, that number had dwindled to 12 meetings a year between, for example, the Orioles and Yankees. Come on, that’s not enough! This year, the Orioles will meet division foes like the Yanks, Red Sox and Blue Jays, 19 times each, much like the old days.
Through much of the ’80s and into the early ’90s, baseball had a wonderful, but perplexing, kind of parity. Year after year, the postseason, and even the World Series, was populated by unexpected gate crashers. Nearly every team in the sport got its turn to win a pennant. For more than a decade, dollars hardly seemed to matter — free agency or not. A team could go from worst to first in a single year. And in 1991, both Series teams — Minnesota and Atlanta — did exactly that.
A World Series visit for the Phillies in ’93 seemed to exhaust the trend. Or, perhaps the baseball gods were so ticked off by The Strike in ’94 that the game was punished with another era of dynastic monotony. Yanks or Braves. Braves or Yanks. Yawn.
Recently, money has been buying happiness with alarming regularity. Within baseball, one side argued that cash would ultimately always be king. The game’s era of parity-despite-free-agency had been an accident. The other side, of which I’m a member, said, “Wait and see.” Money matters. The wealthiest teams will tend to win more, as they always have in baseball. But, perhaps, not a great deal more. Not intolerably more.
In baseball, more than any other major sport, first-rate management can finesse its way around sheer payroll size. And blundering brass can squander almost any edge in available funds. The ideal illustration is General Manager Pat Gillick. Look what happened to Seattle after he arrived. And Baltimore after he left.
The Mariners didn’t just lose A-Rod. Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson have also left town in the past two years. Has any team, since Connie Mack sold off his A’s in the Depression, lost three potential Hall of Famers so quickly while getting nothing in return? Yet Seattle, built around a young, power-pitching rotation, has the best record in baseball (20-5).
Last October, the M’s almost faced down the Yankee head-to-head. This year, even without Rodriguez, they may succeed. How’d Gillick do it? He got Freddy Garcia and John Halama in the Big Unit fire-sale trade. He swiped free agent Aaron Sele out from under the Orioles’ noses. Then, from Japan, he signed Kazuhiro Sasaki (37 saves last year) and seven-time Japanese league batting champion Ichiro Suzuki who, in his big league debut, is hitting .336.
Baseball can only hope this trend continues. The Twins seem to be winning with a bunch of guys with names like Doug Mientkiewicz. Yet no less an authority that Pedro Martinez says that the Twins (18-6) are “the best team we’ve played this year.”
That takes in some territory, since Pedro’s seen plenty of the stumbling Yanks (14-12) who, so far, resemble the aging club of last September more than the champs of October. Will Mike Mussina (1-3, 4.78 ERA) join nearly 25 years worth of jinxed free agent pitchers? Buy a hitter, get production. Buy a pitcher, get a headache.
If you want a shock, don’t look at the top of standings. Look near the bottom. The A’s and White Sox are so far behind already that any historian will tell you that their chances of repeating as division champs are almost nil. The Mets won the pennant last year; now they’re in last place. The implacably excellent Braves are under .500 and got swept by the feisty Phils of Larry Bowa.
While it’s quite possible that baseball’s high dollar franchises will crawl back up to the top, it’s doubtful that the game’s run totals will have a comparable recovery. The high strike is back. Sometimes it actually gets called. But, whether it is or not, the letter-high pitch is now back in the hitter’s subconscious. Umpires may be inconsistent at calling the new strike zone. But you only have to get called out a few times on pitches that used to be called balls before you subtly alter your hitting habits.
The American League has had a stunning drop of 16 points in batting average, from .276 to .260, while the NL was fallen six points from .266. Fewer men on base and fewer hits have led to fewer runs, even though homers have stayed at 2.3 per game.
Offensively, where are we now? Try the NL of 1953. Do you ever hear anybody criticize the days of Stan Musial, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Eddie Mathews, Gil Hodges and Ted Kluszewski? Were their records cheap? Well, they averaged 9.6 runs that season, the same as the current pace in both leagues.
A Cubs vs. Red Sox World Series? Maybe that’s dreaming. But what about a sport with more balance — between rich and poor teams and between hitters and pitchers? Now that’s a possibility. The game’s wealthy franchises and big hitters still have a decided advantage. But maybe it’s not so lopsided. That’s a trend worth rooting for all summer.