Baseball needs more inside pitches

It was funny at the start of the season because no one thought it would continue. It has continued and it is no longer funny. The runs being put up and the homers hit and the earned run averages that are going through the heavens are not for the good of baseball. It is no longer uncommon for 20 runs to be scored in a couple of games each week. The homers are making Roger and Babe roll off the outfield walls.

Longtime manager and now a coach with Giants, Jim Davenport says, “There is no question the ball is wound tighter. Even with the bad pitching, there are shots going out that just wouldn’t have happened before.”

He speaks of the non-power hitters who are taking the ball the other way. “Look at the power alleys in the parks. Three-hundred and sixty feet is not a power alley. It should be 380 or more to have any meaning,” says Davenport.

Those may be the least of the problems. The run production for both leagues is way up. Says my broadcast partner and catcher for Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson, Tim McCarver, “Unless a pitcher will throw insde, he will not win. Pitchers will not come inside today and the hitters know it. That means they can look for a pitch in the middle or on the outside of the plate and be all but sure they will get it. With the strike zone down to the size of a postage stamp, that gives hitters a huge advantage.”

When Fox starts its coverage of baseball in June, McCarver has already decided to do a diagram that blacks out the inside of the plate and the zone above the belt that umpires will not call a strike. What you have left wouldn’t hold a stamp.

Why won’t pitchers come inside? We hear the argument that aluminum bats have scared pitchers growing up because inside pitches get hit. That may be part of the problem, but there is more. Players today make a ton of money. They constantly, as hitters, argue that pitchers can’t be coming inside when being struck on the hand or head or ribs could put them out of action and cost them millions down the road because they lose the chance to put up numbers while they are on the DL.

What that means is that the relationship among players to protect each other is more important than winning games. If in fact that is a reality, the game is in real trouble. It becomes a fraud.

Bob Gibson’s response to that argument has always been that if you don’t want to get hit, don’t be leaning over the plate. How bad has it become? A couple of weeks ago, Gary Sheffield of the Marlins, who loves to lean, took a called strike. He turned first on the umpire for making the call and then he glared at the pitcher for throwing inside. It was a strike, for gosh sakes.

There are more debates going on among the owners to raise the mound back to its height prior to 1968 when it was lowered because Bob Gibson had a year when nobody could hit him. His ERA for the year was under 2.00. Don Drysdale was knocking people on their wallets and pitchers would generally stick it in your ear if you got to leaning too far.

There is a lack of pitching talent. That is likely to continue, but need not prevent the games scores from reverting to baseball instead of football. The game can knock off some of this offense, which has become absurd, by at least calling the whole strike zone and allowing pitchers to reassert themselves on the inside.

St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa has long been an advocate of the inside pitch. He is first to yell if the pitch is anywhere near the head. The idea is not to injure, but to keep hitters honest and give the pitchers a chance to get outs before the score becomes 15-1.

Perhaps fans do want offense, but there is still no more an exciting game than the 1-0 shutout. The game of baseball was meant to be played in two hours and 30 minutes or less. Fan are leaving the yards very early in these home run derbies that go on for four hours. If watching the ball leave the yard repeatedly is such a joy, how come nobody is showing up a Tiger stadium to watch their staff get drilled night after night?

An honest strike zone and a recognition that a pitcher can come inside and hitters don’t have a right to charge the mound when it happens will put a lot more baseball back into the game.