Thoughts on 1-0 Games(Part 2)

In Part 1, we looked at the declining run production in MLB over the last 13 seasons, it's impact on postseason baseball and a possible fan backlash due to boring games(although grand slam HR's in the 8'th inning may tend to quiet those fears).  In Part 2, we will look at what factors may be causing this observed decline in run production.

The easy answer is the banning and testing of PED's.  After all, didn't the peak in power and run production occur at the peak of PED use?  It is certainly possible that PED's contributed to the peak in run production in the late 1990's and early 2000's.  There is certainly an intuitive relationship between hitters being bigger and stronger and being able to swing a bat harder and faster thus hitting it farther when solid contact is made.  On the other hand, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were not big men and probably never lifted a weight in their life let alone used anabolic steroids.  They somehow managed to hit over 1400 HR's in their combined careers!  There is no obvious connection between PED's and critical elements of hitting such as timing, eye-hand coordination and pitch selection.  In addition, there is ample evidence that pitchers used as much or more than hitters with a much more intuitively obvious connection between strength, velocity and stamina.  Are we to believe that since PED's were banned/tested for, pitchers have somehow figured out how to beat the system and continue to use while the hitters have all quit?  One more point to consider is that run production did not simply spike in the late 1990's or suddenly drop off after PED's were banned.  There was a long, gradual run up to the peak run production of 2000 that started in the early 1980's and there has been a long gradual decline since 2000 up to and including 2013.

One fairly simple explanation is that there are just more and better pitchers in the league now than in the late 1990's.  That also seems to be the case in the later 1960's and early 1970s' during another severe slump on run production.  There is an interesting article up on Fangraphs entitled The Resurgence of Young Postseason Starters looking at the percentages of SP's under the age of 25 in postseason play over several decades.  The results were pretty eye-opening and created one of those Ah-ha! moments for me:

1960's- 30%
1970's- 26%
1980's- 21%
1990's- 17%
2000's- 19%
2010's- 24%

Just as the 1960's saw the influx of a remarkable number of HOF caliber pitchers such as Koufax, Drysdale, Marichal, Gibson and later Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro and Jim Palmer, we are currently witnessing the emergence of a remarkable number of young pitching talent that will prove to be every bit as good over the course of their careers.  That is not to say there were not great pitchers in the 1990's.  RJ, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux may well have beaten Koufax, Marichal and Lefty Carlton in a time warp, but to use relative measures such as ERA+ to prove superiority may draw inaccurate conclusions as it is likely that the average pitcher of the 1990's was simply not as good as in the 1960's and 2010's.

There has also been a fairly dramatic shift in the strike zone from the 1990's until now.  In the 1990's, most umpires were not calling any pitch above about mid-thigh a strike while giving more leeway on the corners, particularly the outside corner.  Who can forget umpire Kevin Gregg calling strikes on pitches by Livan Hernandez  that were a full 8 inches off the outside corner of the plate in the 1997 postseason?  After that debacle, MLB intructed umpires to call a strike zone that was closer to what is in the rulebook with a resulting narrowing, but also vertically expanding the zone.  This had the effect of harming pitchers like Kirk Reuter and Greg Maddux who lived by horizontally expanding the strike zone at and below the knees.  It helped young, hard throwing pitchers like Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw who prefer to challenge hitters up in the zone.  Pitchfx has reinforced this trend by forcing umpires to less creative with the strike zone and call it according to the rule book.

The last two decades have also seen a remarkable evolution in the average pitcher's arsenal of pitches.  Mariano Rivera built a HOF career on just one pitch, the cut fastball, that was not in widespread use before he made it famous.  The cut fastball has similar movement as a slider except that it is apparently easier to learn and throw, easier to control and harder for batters to recognize.  Now, instead of simply throwing fastballs, pitchers like Ryan Vogelsong can throw 3 different versions of the pitch, 4-seam, 2 seam and cutter, which all have different movement which batters have to try to adjust to on pitches that are traveling at 90+ MPH.  There is also the curve-slurve-slider continuum of pitches which all have similar movement but travel at different velocities.  In the ALDS final, Justin Verlander put on a clinic of varying breaking pitch velocities in the middle innings against the A's who flailed helplessly.  Lastly, there is the changeup-circle change-split change-split fastball continuum of pitches which radically expands the off-speed arsenal beyond the straight changeup.

While pitching techniques have advanced rapidly, so has the way baseball teams evaluate both individual and team defense.  Metrics such as UZR have for the first time quantified the effect of defense, especially range, on run prevention.  More and more teams are insisting that their players not only catch the ball reliably but cover a lot of ground in the field.  More teams are showing a willingness to sacrifice offense for improved defense when acquiring players.  Spray charts have enabled teams to be much more aggressive in the placement of fielders in areas where the batter is most likely to hit the ball.  These defensive factors may be making a bigger impact on suppressing run production than we imagine.

In summary, while PED's and their banning may be a factor in the decline in run production, it is more likely that what we are observing is due to an influx of young pitching talent, changes in the called strike zone, the evolution of pitching techniques, and improved defense.

In Part 3, we will look at what, if anything, Major League Baseball can do to increase run production.