Stark: The age of the pitcher
From SABR member Jayson Stark at ESPN.com on June 14, 2012:
Every once in a while, we get the feeling the great sport of baseball is trying to tell us something. This would be one of those times.
Three no-hitters light up the baseball sky in a span of 13 days. Five no-hitters — two of them perfect games — rock our world before we’ve even made it through the second week of June.
So … anybody get the feeling that it’s a beautiful time to be a pitcher?
Then again, on second thought, did we really need a no-hitter epidemic to make that point? The evidence has been all around us. And not just in the last two weeks. How about in the last five years? Think about it. Think about how the universe has shifted:
Once, there was a time when a 73-homer man roamed this earth.
And seven different teams scored 900 runs — in the same season.
And two pitchers led their leagues with ERAs NORTH of 3.00 — for the first time in modern history.
Boy, how long ago does all that seem, huh? The game of baseball is so different now, it feels like those days — the Age of Offensive Insanity — happened, what, 75 years ago?
Read the full article here: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8048897/the-age-pitcher-how-got-here-mlb
Originally published: June 14, 2012. Last Updated: June 14, 2012.