Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14045
Despite measures taken to increase offensive production, baseball's cyclical nature is beginning to fix the offensive overcorrection. A core of young, talented, hard-throwing starting pitchers have all reached the Majors in quick succession. The way they aggressively attack the strike zone, leading with fastballs that hit the mid to upper 90's show, flashes of what hitters encountered pre-1968. • Stephen Strasburg is only the most recent among this new breed. • David Price, in his third year, leads the American League with a 2.42 ERA, only three ticks better than young Red Sox righty, Clay Bucholz. • Bucholz's teammate, Jon Lester is right behind him with a 2.77 ERA and an 11-3 record. What's even more incredible is that Lester is 9th all time in winning percentage (.718) for pitchers who've started at least 100 games. • Phil Hughes, an Orange County product and another 11-game-winner, also falls into this category of young fireballers. Why? Well, all four pitch in the AL East, the most brutal offensive division in baseball, and all are under the age of 27. These four pitchers are certainly not the only young hurlers breaking bats and wearing down American League hitters. Felix Hernandez, already a veteran and staff ace at age 23, cemented his reputation two years ago after Manny Ramirez, then a Red Sox, chose to schedule his off days when the Sox faced Hernandez and the Mariners. Somewhere Bob Gibson's smiling about that. The National League has its own set of young hurlers, and Tim Lincecum, all 5'11 and 170 pounds of him, leads the way. His high-torque delivery epitomizes the primacy that speed and power play in the modern pitcher's repertoire. 15 years ago, guys his size were pitching on the corners, nibbling at the strike zone, and throwing seven kinds of junk to keep the bat off the ball. Now, Lincecum is proving that attacking with power is the only way to get the jump on the League's best hitters. Other young NL pitchers, like the Rockies' Ubaldo Jimenez and the Marlins' Josh Johnson, harness their velocity to the same end. They throw strikes, and they're not afraid of putting the ball over the plate where the batter can hit it, because, as they've proven— Jimenez's ERA is a paltry 2.24, while Johnson's improves even on that at 1.70—the hitter can't. Strasburg, like his cohort of young hurlers, may be the best of the bunch. He throws harder, hitting triple digits with consistency, than any other starter in baseball, and he has off-speed stuff to put hitters away. It all begins with the power fastball, though, the great equalizer, the statement pitch, keeping the hitter on edge, its effectiveness dictating a win from a loss. We're only at the All Star Break, which makes some of these pitching statistics so incredible, but it also reminds us that there is a lot of baseball left, played in hot weather, when baseballs fly furthest. Maybe offenses will turn things around in the second half and bring the Johnsons, Lesters, and Prices back to Earth, but maybe it's only the beginning. Maybe the pendulum is just picking up speed as it tilts back to the side of the pitcher, and maybe the next few years will harken back to the days of Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, and Robert Feller, when dominant starters ruled the League, and a graveyard of busted bats lay in their wakes as they traveled from city to city. LIVEMAGS.NET AUGUST>>10 13