‘Keep it down’ no longer mantra
Pitchers discovering high heat is the best answer to HR uptick
Pitchers used to feel safe venturing low in the strike zone. The space below a batter’s belt invited them. Keeping pitches down made outs significantly more reliable and long-distance hits rare.
A pitcher might tip his cap were he to deal a pitch less than three feet above home plate and watch it get hit over the outfield fence. He might blame the altitude or wind for the shift in fortune.
That was a quainter time, when home runs could be called “lucky” and before upward swing angles cleaved the protection that pitchers had used for more than a century.
Hitters are enjoying a fly ball revolution now. Over the last three seasons, they have mounted a coup for the bottom half of the zone, turning it into a launch pad for a record 6,105 home runs last year.
“You can’t go there,” Astros reliever Joe Smith said.
Baseball still heavily favors pitchers — along with homers
came a new record for strikeouts — but the recent fusillade is making the men on the mound question long-held orthodoxy.
“I got crushed on pitches down,” Astros starter Charlie Morton said.
A matchup against Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado in 2015 vexed Morton.
“I hit a spot: knees, on the black, down and away,” Morton said.
Arenado crushed it. Morton relives the memory like Jim Garrison recalling the Warren Commission, except instead of repeating “back and to the left,” Morton re-examines the logic of his pitch location.
“When I came up with the Braves,” Morton said, “it was down and away, down and away, down and away. To a certain degree it still applies, but hitters have altered their swings. Usually, down is the safe place to go, and now it’s not.”
Morton highlighted Arenado and Angels center fielder Mike Trout as hitters with swings tailored to punish low pitches.
“Your pitching coach calls you in pregame and says, ‘Oh, just keep the ball down and you’ll be good,’” Morton said. “No, you won’t be good. They’ll probably drive a ball back at your face.”
Singles practically passé
The rise of pitch velocity and fielding shifts has made getting the ball up in the air more important than hitting it hard on the ground. In addition to the most home runs ever, last season led to the fewest sacrifice bunts and lowest percentage of singles in history.
“Guys are trying to find a pitch to elevate,” said Astros center fielder George Springer, who hit a career-high 34 home runs last year.
“That’s all hitters talk about now,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said.
Teams hit 0.95 home runs per game in 1997. The rate rocketed to 1.26 in 2017. Ten straight seasons of record-setting strikeout totals have not assuaged pitchers.
“Pitchers don’t like giving up homers,” Hinch said.
For years, starter Justin Verlander has opined that Major League Baseball, motivated to boost offense, changed the balls, which commissioner Rob Manfred has denied.
Verlander vociferated on Twitter this spring, after a study by FiveThirtyEight.com showed that baseballs used during the 2017 season were less dense than ones used before the midway point of the 2015 season. Scoring and batting average in 2014 had reached their lowest points since 1973, when baseball instituted the designated hitter.
When asked about how to reverse the home run trend, Verlander personified an emoji he had Tweeted of a person with his palms facing up and “#juicedballs” punctuating his futility.
“I don’t think you can counter it,” Verlander said. “I’m not gonna change my approach. The balls are different. More homers is part of the game.”
Your move, pitchers
Others on the Astros are less intractable. They point out that just how data revealed certain launch angles correlate with avoiding outs, it offers pitchers curated reports about where hitters struggle most.
“I’m not the least bit worried,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “They’re going to figure out ways to get good hitters out. They have much more feedback on their own arsenal.”
Pitchers likely will riddle the top of the zone with more bullets this season.
“The elevated fastball is going to be the next trend,” Hinch said.
Relievers who throw higher and harder than starters have proved the efficacy of high heat. Comparing their rates per nine innings last year, starters were 15 percent more likely to surrender an extra-base hit than relievers.
The temptation and torture of the high fastball endures because it appears to a batter like the ideal pitch to lift.
“That feeling that you have that you can kill this ball, and then you swing as hard as you can and you miss it — that still happens,” reliever Will Harris said.
Launching a countermovement will not be that easy. Setting up high fastballs might be becoming more difficult in an age when digital technology is training hitters to identify borderline strikes from balls better.
They might not care about striking out, but they are improving their abilities to get ahead in counts and force pitches in the strike zone, which are easier to blast.
Reliever Chris Devenski said pitchers will pull baseball’s pendulum back their way if they adopt his mentality.
“I’ve never been a fan of a flipme-over curveball,” he said. “I try to throw everything with conviction.
“What all those hitters are trying to do, that opens up the top of the zone. There’s a lot of outs up there. Just gotta exploit it.”