Holy whifferoni, Batman, what is going on here? Is the Steroid Era officially dead and buried or have we stepped into the Wayback Machine? Consider this:
110 years of Major League Baseball -- 18 perfect games.
One-quarter of the 2010 season -- three perfect games, including one that went 28 outs.
More than that, the pitchers seem to be winning this year. Just last night, Johan Santana hurled seven shutout innings. And the Mets lost.
And the Dodgers and Dbacks dragged their bats through 24 innings of futility over two days, pushing a total of two runners across the plate. In the second contest, Arizona starter Edwin Jackson pitched a complete-game three-hit shutout and three relievers blanked the Dodgers for four further innings...before losing on a single with two outs in the 14th. Six L.A. hurlers -- only one of whom I've ever heard of -- de-fanged the Snakes for 14 frames on eight hits and one walk.
It would be offensive, except there hasn't been any offense. ARod's stepped on the mound more often than some teams have stepped on the plate. Ubaldo Jimenez is a nice pitcher, but an 0.78 ERA after 11 starts tells you something is up. The guy pitches in Denver. There's been an awful lot of goose eggs laid this year. Where are all the geese?
The numbers vindicate this impression. The AL has posted a .331/.408 OPS this year. Check out the previous five:
09 -- .336/.428
08 -- .336/.420
07 -- .338/.423
06 -- .339/.437
05 -- .330/.424
(OPS is down, but not as dramatically in the NL. Being consistently bad, pitchers' batting provides ballast.)
The last time AL bats were so impotent? 1993 -- .337/.408. Evan Longoria was in third grade that year. Starlin Castro was in diapers.
I don't offer any ex-post facto explanations. The explosions have died down at the same time the game seems to have rid itself of steroids, if not other enhancers. Correlation isn't causation, but you can't have the latter without the former. Maybe teams are getting a better handle on pitcher health, or understanding better how to manage workloads. Maybe it's just one of those momentary fluctuations, or a seasonal thing that will heat up with the weather.
Whatever it is, there's been an awful lot of not hitting this year. I can hear the distant echo, "Bring back the 60's, man!"
b
1 comment:
Yeah, when Kyle Kendrick pitches some games like that (and loses) you gotta know the baseball gods have just flat out decided that this is the year of the pitcher!
Where's your comment about the travesty of the call that blew the perfect game? Where do you fall in the debate to have Selig overturn it?
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