May. 07, 2006
BY GORDON WITTENMYER
Pioneer Press
What happened to the inside pitch?
Brushing hitters back to establish the inner half of the plate was once a pitcher's right, but these days it's a dying art.
With one out and two men on base a few nights ago in Houston, the worst hitter in the National League stepped to the plate against the best lefthander in the NL.
Seconds later, the first pitch from the Astros' Andy Pettitte's hit St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina on the arm, actually, it hit the piece of body armor he had strapped to the arm, and the bases were loaded.
Broadcaster Joe Morgan, a Hall of Fame second baseman, reacted with outrage.
"That's one of the reasons pitchers don't pitch inside anymore," he ranted. "Not because they're afraid to hit them. They're afraid to put them on base. So they pitch them away, and that plays right into the hitter's hands."
As if on cue, the next batter drove a 1-2 pitch into left field for a two-run double.
Morgan's outrage isn't new. And it's not unique to him.
The mastery of pitching inside, effectively and consistently, has been a dying art in big-league baseball for years — finally reaching endangered status, at least in Minnesota, in the first month of this season.
Bigger, stronger hitters strap on armor, crowd the plate, dive into pitches and get indignant if a pitch gets close enough to make them think about doing anything else. Shrinking ballparks, growing earned-run averages, and a fear of deep counts and walks have provided decreasing incentive for pitchers to risk mistakes inside.
The result is fewer pitchers than ever commanding enough of the inside part of the plate to make a hitter do anything but settle in and order room service.
Twins TV analyst Bert Blyleven, among the best at pitching inside aggressively during a 23-year playing career that might one day lead to the Hall of Fame, has pounded that point repeatedly during recent broadcasts while watching the team's once-proud pitching staff get drilled into submission by leaning, diving, comfortable hitters.
Even after a week of improvement, which included veteran Brad Radke turning around a horrendous first month with more aggressive inside pitching against Kansas City on Wednesday, the starting rotation's ERA ranks last in the majors.
"I'm not just talking about one time," Blyleven said of the bust-hitters-inside mantra he has directed at Twins pitchers. "I'm talking about following it up. It might be the third time you have to go back in there. That sends a message to everybody else on the bench.
Blyleven learned that style of pitching from one of the greatest intimidators in history, Hall of Fame Dodger Don Drysdale, through watching Drysdale as a kid in Southern California and then talking to him as a young pitcher in the early 1970s after Drysdale became a broadcaster.
"The one thing I learned from him is that when you're going in there for a purpose and you've made your purpose, go back in there again. Double it up," he said. "Then you've got the hitter maybe thinking. That's exactly where you want him. You want that little bit of doubt.
"The fear factor has to come into play."
Blyleven and other veteran pitching greats make it clear they aren't talking about head hunting.
"It's not about trying to hit anybody. It's just establishing the inner half of the plate," he said. "That's the art of it. That's the art of pitching."
AFRAID OF MISTAKES
So what happened to all the artists?
Sal "The Barber" Maglie, the famed intimidator who got his nickname for the close shaves he delivered in the 1940s and '50s, never came close to leading the league in hit batsmen but put as many batters in the dirt as any pitcher of his day, or since.
"When I'm pitching, I figure that the plate is mine," he once said, "and I don't like anybody getting too close to it. I gotta throw at 'em. Hell, it's my bread and butter."
Critics of today's more timid, finesse pitching styles often blame the caviar-and-fine wine generation of salaries and players for ignoring the bread and butter.
But the real reasons for this evolution in pitching are more complex.
It all seems to start with the simplest reason: "Because it's harder. It's harder to pitch inside and probably always was," said Paul Splittorff, the former Kansas City pitcher who had 20- and 19-win seasons in the 1970s. "You have better command away, and you don't get hurt as much away as you do inside with a mistake."
Changes in the game since the late 1960s have shifted the advantage to the hitters and made working the outside corners an increasingly pronounced reality. Those factors include lowering the mound in 1969, increased weight training and supplements (legal and otherwise) and a dramatic increase in hitters' ballparks over the past 15 years.
One of the resulting ironies is that as pitchers have become less willing and able to pitch effectively inside, it has become even more important that they do it.
"It's a way to stay alive, a way to survive as a pitcher," said Twins broadcaster Jack Morris, one of the majors' most fearsome competitors during his 18-year pitching career. "If you didn't do it, you either had phenomenal control, or you didn't last."
And phenomenal control alone doesn't get you far in today's slugger-friendly environment — where hitters got an assist starting in 2000 when Major League Baseball mandated warnings and automatic ejections for throwing at hitters.
CODE HAS CHANGED
Morgan's outrage pales compared to Morris' when he watches the way pitchers and hitters interact today.
"When they take swings like they're taking today on pitcher's counts, you've got to say, 'Do I get any respect out here?' " Morris said. "It's part of the game."
Pitching inside, that is. Brushing hitters off the plate.
It has to be part of the game, he said, maybe now more than ever.
"When I first came up," said Splittorff, who debuted in 1970, "most hitters were looking to pull the ball. Now most of your good hitters are good out over the plate to away, and they're going away with more authority than they did, so that has made it tougher.
"So now it's more imperative to pitch effectively inside, and not only to pitch inside off the plate, but to be able to get guys out inside, because they're more vulnerable inside now."
That's because they're leaning, even diving, because they're more comfortable.
"Back then you don't dive," Morris said of his era. "You dive, you're going to get hit. You just do it once, you're going to get hit."
In the decades before Morris pitched, the code was more intense. Hall of famer Rod Carew said Bob Gibson — recently declared the most intimidating pitcher of all time by a cable TV show — knocked him down in a spring training game for taking too much time to fix the dirt in the batter's box.
Former Twins great Tony Oliva, the only player in major league history to win batting titles in his first two seasons, was so successful so early in his career that veteran pitchers knocked him down four or five times a week, he said, to try to intimidate him.
"I spent one season more on the ground than standing up," Oliva said.
MLB warning system or not, that kind of competitive fire rarely shows up on a big-league diamond these days.
"Today's game is a gentlemen's game," Blyleven said.
Thirty years of free agency with ever-increasing player movement has made ex-teammates of almost any two given veterans today, and reunions, complete with hugs and warm wishes, are common sights around batting practice cages before games — in stark contrast to even the 1970s and certainly the '50s and '60s, when fraternization rules were actually enforced.
"I still like to think that's the enemy over there," Morris said.
SOCIETY PLAYING ROLE
Del Unser, the former Philadelphia outfielder who came up in 1968 and now scouts for the Phillies, said he remembers Frank Robinson breaking up a double play so hard he sent the Phillies' second baseman into left field. The next time Robinson slid into second, the same infielder slapped a tag so hard on Robinson's head the helmet went flying.
In neither case did the aggrieved player confront the other. It was how the game was played.
And that's how pitchers pitched.
The shift away from that is one of the most fundamental changes in the game over the past 30 years, Unser and others say. "All these love taps at first base (on tag plays) make me mad," he said.
Unser suggests larger societal roles are at play in the shift.
"Sociologically, I think there's a difference," he said. "Guys were raised by their fathers. If statistics are right, 57 percent of kids are from broken families and divorced families now. … I remember my dad getting on a basketball court with me, and he would pass me a ball that would **** near go through you. And he would say, 'Catch the ball! Catch the ball!' You got raised tough. And I wasn't a tough kid."
Whatever the reasons pitchers aren't as willing to bust hitters inside, the results are as simple to see as the three home runs off Kyle Lohse on Friday night. And the value is as easy to see as Drysdale's plaque in Cooperstown.
And the solution to what ails some hard-hit, disrespected pitchers is simple to Blyleven.
"Drysdale always told me when he went to the mound, both sides of the plate were his," Blyleven said. "The hitter just had to guess which side he was going to."
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