Zero To One
tedr:
With Garza’s no-hitter today, there have been 5 no-hitters this season. Even crazier is that this is only one fewer than the number of one-hitters this year, apparently. And one of those was Armando Galarraga’s (should-have-been) perfect game.
So it should be 6 no-hitters to 5 one-hitters this year. Crazy.
Lots of speculation as to if the absence of steroids is what’s behind this.
Steroids don’t help you hit the ball. Maybe it helps you hit the ball farther, but that’s questionable in itself. Players tend to use steroids to heal faster from injuries, so maybe you’ve got a causation if you can show that players who hit well have spent more time on the DL than in years past, and that’s due to a lack of steroids accelerating the healing process. Again, pretty dubious.
And pitchers weren’t exactly not juicing. A few things I think might be contributing:
-pitchers started changing their workout programs about 10 years ago- more long toss, a graduated increase of innings from year to year in the minors, less breaking balls until triple A. They’ve “recovered” faster from not juicing than the hitters.
-Pitchers have started to adjust to the Yankee/RedSox/Phillies way of hitting- take a bunch of pitches and drive the counts up. Well, hello strike one and strike two instead of nibbling early- seems to me hitters are falling behind more now than they were
-MLB’s efforts to create a consistent strike zone- Again, I have no facts here, but I think the zone’s a bit bigger than it was 5 years ago- an effort to speed up the ame a bit.
