Quality pitching

I couldn’t help but notice how quick each of the four baseball championships were. The longest of the four was 2 hours, 7 minutes. It all comes down to a pitcher throwing strikes.

I overheard on ESPN radio over the weekend (I spent numerous hours on the road) that this past Major League Draft was one of the best for pitchers in quite some time. And I was watching the College World Series on Monday (yes, I do like baseball) and Orel Hershiser commented on just how good the pitching has been, so far, in this year’s World Series.

There’s a connection here. Maybe it’s only a phase but pitching has improved lately. Tim Kurkjian (ESPN radio) said steroids (the lack thereof) one only a small part of the reason for this trend. Of course he was talking about at the professional level but the point is, pitchers seem to be better now than, let’s say, six or eight years ago.

In 2004 the average length of the four championship games was one hour and 55 minutes. On Saturday it was five minutes less. In ’02 it was two hours and 17 seconds. I know this is not an accurate comparison and maybe next year each of the finals will take over two hours to play.

My point is I’m seeing better pitching. Maybe the coaching is getting better. Maybe the pitchers are developing more pitches; relying less on just the fastball.

Whatever the reason I like it. In high school baseball there’s nothing more boring than watching a pitcher throw ball after ball after ball. It’s one of the reasons I like the 3-2 rule in the Detroit Catholic League. But that’s a topic for another time.