Bream’s slide begat long fall of Pirates

biggest changes since Bream crossed the Fulton County Stadium plate.

Labor peace

The 1994 strike over an ownership-proposed salary cap cost baseball hundreds of games, including the entire postseason. Baseball had endured similar work stoppages in1972 and 1981. But, when the next collective bargaining agreement expires in 2021, Major League Baseball will have gone 26 years without a work stoppage.

The Pirates are currently members of the NL Central, which didn’t exist in 1992. Before canceling the 1994 World Series, acting commissioner Bud Selig introduced a third division and a new round of playoffs known as the Division Series. In addition to the three division champions, the teamwith the best record who didn’t win its division would reach the playoffs as a wild card.

The Pirates’ realignment to the NL Central was not their choice.

“We have mutual competitive alliances with Philadelphia, Montreal and New York," Douglas Danforth, the Pirates’ board chairman, told the New York Times in 1993. “We feel it would negatively impact our gate and our television revenue.”

The steroid era

Baseball surely had entered the steroid era by 1992, and players had used amphetamines since the 1950s, but the widespread acknowledgement of, and attempts to curtail, the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs had not yet begun. The revelation of Mark McGwire using androstenedione, the BALCO investigation, the Mitchell report, Rafael Palmeiro pointing a finger, A-Rod (round 1) and Biogenesis were all still to come.

Asfar as baseball has come, with stiffer penalties starting at 80 games for a positive test, more tests and blood testing for human growth hormone, PEDs remain a part of the game. The Pirates Starling Marte was suspended for 80 games this season after testing positive for Nandrolone, one of the oldest drugs in the book.

Money

The throw to the plate would be Bonds’ last act as a Pirate. In December 1992, Bonds, who won his second MVP that year after hitting .311/.456/.624 with 34 homers and 39 steals, signed with the San Francisco Giants and became the highest-paid player in baseball history with a sixyear, $43 million contract.

Now, Nick Markakis has a $44 million contract. Bryce Harper might make $40 million a year when he hits free agency. Industry revenue has surpassed $10 billion. MLB Advanced Media has been a huge success, and both local TV deals (the Los Angeles Dodgers’ deal with Time Warner Cable and SportsNet LA is worth $8.35 billion) and national ones (Fox and TBS agreed to eight-year contracts in 2012 worth $800 million annually) provided the sport with a massive influx of money.

Pitching

Doug Drabek went eight innings in Game 7. Tim Wakefield threw two complete games in the series, including 141pitches in Game 6, and Bob Walk went the distance in Game 5. This was one year after the Jack Morris performance in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series: 10 scoreless innings, seven hits, eight strikeouts.

This year, the New York Yankees won the wild-card game after starter Luis Severino recorded one out. Starter Jon Lester threw 3 ⅔ innings in relief in Game 4 of the NLDS, and Scherzer pitched a fateful relief inning in Game 5.

The trend continues from last October, when Lester and Trevor Bauer pitched in relief in Game 7 of the World Series and Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona used Millerin relief basically at any point in the game throughout the playoffs. It isn’t necessarily new — Randy Johnson pitched the final 1⅓ innings of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series one day after starting Game 6, and Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner have relieved in recent years — but the emphasis on building and employing a strong and flexible bullpen in October at the expense of length from starting pitchers has increased.

‘Moneyball’

In 1992, you might’ve known Bream’s batting average (.261), home-run total (10) and RBIs (61).

Now, you can look up his OPS+ (107), WAR (0.9) and RAA (-3) among countless other statistics.

Credit Billy Beane, a player-turned-executive for the Oakland Athletics and the subject of the book/movie “Moneyball,” for spurring the use of analytics in baseball and other sports over the past two decades. MLB has led the way in this field, and sabermetrics have changed the way teams approach player development, regular season games and the playoffs. It’s a boon for fans, who can look up Andrew McCutchen’s launch angles on Statcast and Gerrit Cole’s pitch mix on Gameday.

The rise of data is even credited with lengthening ballgames, as managers make more pitching changes and turn to bullpens earlier, especially in the postseason. Who knows? Maybe Drabek wouldn’t have gotten the ball in the ninth inning Oct. 14, 1992, if the Pirates had relied on the same amount of data theyhave today.

Instant replay

Game 7 had plenty of whatifs.

Whatif home-plate umpire John McSherry hadn’t felt ill and been replaced by the hitter-friendly Randy Marsh? What if Barry Bonds had stood closer to center field when Francisco Cabrera’s hit fell in the outfield? What if there had been instant replay?

It probably wouldn’t have changed anything — Bream clearly appears to touch home plate with his left foot before the tag.

But since MLB implemented instant replay — first to review potential home runs in 2008, and later expanded in 2014 — plenty of crucial calls havebeen overturned.

The wild-card game

Pirates fans don’t love wild card games, which haven’t worked in the team’s favor in their past two chances. As the winners of the National League East, the 1992 Pirates didn’t have to face anybody in a singular, winner-takes-all wild card game or a division series. Four of the 26 MLB teams that played in 1992 made the postseason — and therefore made the two league championship series.

So as bummed as Pirates fans are that the team’s 98-win season in 2015 came down to a one-game playoff, perhaps they can take solace in the fact that that team wouldn’t have even qualified for the postseason under the 1992 format.

Home runs, oh my

Baseball is steeped in history — hence, a 25-year retrospective on a single slide — but the style of play has changed dramatically in recent years.

This season, MLB batters set a record (6,105) for home runs in a season, smashing the previous record (5,693), which was set at the height of the steroid era in 2000. Sowhat gives? It’s not that pitchers are getting worse; in fact, 2017 marked the 10th consecutive season that pitchers and hitters set a record for strikeouts. Instead, plenty of players thank (or blame) changes in the baseball itself, although league commissioner Rob Manfred denies that the baseballs are “juiced.” Other factors — such as changes in baseball bats, players’ modified swing paths and the increased number of pitchers with high heat — have been considered, too.