BOOM TIME : Stronger Hitters Plus Weaker Pitchers Plus Smaller Parks Add Up to Lots and Lots of Runs

Is it a golden age of hitting, as Frank Thomas insists, or is it the result of tarnished pitching, livelier baseballs, lighter bats, tighter strike zones, smaller ballparks, stronger hitters and depleted ozone?

The offensive onslaught that began during the longest April in major league history has continued unabated, particularly in the American League, where Thomas resides as first baseman of the Chicago White Sox.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing all the excuses,” he said in Anaheim recently, referring to juiced baseballs, diluted pitching and restricted strike zones, among other explanations for the bombardment.

“There are guys now who can hit for high average and guys who can hit home runs, and the credit should go to the hitters,” he said.

“I call it a golden age for hitting, and it started three or four years ago with guys like Mo Vaughn, Albert Belle, Ken Griffey and myself.

“The pitching is no different now than it was then. You’ve just got some heavyweight hitters now.”

Mark McGwire, one of the heavyweights, agreed.

“I wouldn’t say I resent it, but I don’t understand all the excuses,” the Oakland Athletics’ first baseman said. “There are some outstanding hitters out there. Why not accept it and be happy? It’s good for baseball.

“People come to see guys hit home runs and pitchers throw 100 mph. They don’t come to see 2-1 games. They react to that by saying it was boring.”

If so, there has been nothing boring about the first half of the 1996 season.

The Minnesota Twins, without Kirby Puckett, set the tone by setting a major league record for runs in April.

And the A’s, with McGwire one of the few recognizable and proven players, have taken over as the ’96 poster boys by establishing a pace that will break the New York Yankees’ 1961 record of 240 home runs in a season.

That was the year Roger Maris hit 61 and Mickey Mantle 54.

Now Brady Anderson, the Baltimore Orioles’ leadoff hitter and a player who had never hit more than 21 homers in a season, is the All-Star break leader with 30.

Sparky Anderson, the former Cincinnati Red and Detroit Tiger manager, shook his head and cited bad pitching, smaller ballparks and “nitro” fueled baseballs.

“The way baseball has been in trouble [because of the 1994 strike and ongoing labor problems] they’ve been looking for ways to generate excitement,” he said.

“That’s fine, but in fairness to guys like Hank Aaron and Roger Maris and Pete Rose, they ought to draw a line and put an asterisk on any record that is set from here on.

“All of these should be included in a new group of records, the new modern era.”

In April, Minnesota Manager Tom Kelly apologized to fans for that “so-called exhibition of professional baseball” after his team beat the Detroit Tigers, 24-11.

“Nobody likes to see that,” Kelly said of the offensive merry-go-round. “Maybe some fans like it, but I don’t know who.”

A’s General Manager Sandy Alderson agreed.

“I like offense, but there’s an imbalance now that’s embarrassing,” he said, adding, “I don’t think you can point to any one thing” having created it except that there’s certainly “a dearth of good, hard throwers and the overall conditioning and strength of the hitters compared to five to 10 years ago” has improved significantly.

Expansion, of course, has contributed to watered-down pitching and force-feeding in the major leagues.

But if the imbalance is out of hand, it was pushed in that direction by the owners, believing offense is what fans wanted.

They lowered the mound after pitchers dominated in 1968, added the designated hitter in the American League in 1973 (the AL has since outscored the NL every year except one) and have refused to force umpires to call the high strike defined in the rule book.

If this is what fans want, why has the NL outdrawn the AL in 18 of the 23 years since the designated hitter was created?

“I do think fans favor offense within reasonable bounds,” acting Commissioner Bud Selig said. “The question is, what’s reasonable bounds?

“The dimension [of the onslaught] has been startling, no question about it. I refuse to believe pitching has gone that far south, but we’ll wait and see how it plays out over the season.”

If the 1994 season had played out, instead of ending on Aug. 12 because of the players’ strike, several offensive records might have fallen, including that for home runs in a season.

What is happening in 1996 is simply baseball in the ‘90s.

The theories:

PASS THE JUICE

Sparky Anderson puts it this way:

“I saw where [Atlanta Brave Manager] Bobby Cox wants to cut open one of these baseballs to see what’s different, what they’re putting inside. I’d be concerned for his life. He might blow up.”

Internal combustion?

Many have been saying for several seasons that the baseball is harder and wound tighter.

“This is an industry that can’t even agree on the designated hitter,” said Scott Smith, director of marketing services for Rawlings, which produces the balls in Costa Rica.

“To think that baseball could pull off a conspiracy aimed at changing the properties of the ball is unbelievable. How are all those people going to get together on it, agree to it and then keep it quiet?”

Smith insisted that there have been no changes in the specifications and that Rawlings uses even more sophisticated equipment now to make sure those specifications are met.

Nevertheless, many in baseball cite the distances the ball is traveling, the frequency of those bombs and the fact that even players not considered home run hitters are hitting them to the opposite field as justification for thinking the balls are juiced, that Rawlings was instructed to make changes.

“I’ll tell you this,” said former catcher and major league manager Jeff Torborg. “Pitchers used to be able to take their fingernail and raise the seam to improve the grip and break on their curveball. If they tried it with these balls, they’d break their nail. That’s how hard they are.”

Rawlings is conditioned to the speculation.

“Everything about hitting a home run is variable,” said Smith. “The only constant is the baseball, but what do people blame? The baseball.”

FAREWELL TO ARMS

There is one other constant: the universal complaint that only the Braves and, perhaps, Dodgers have enough pitching; that most other clubs are short of starters and short of middle relievers. It’s a numbers game that figures to get worse when baseball adds two teams in 1998.

Consider: In 1960, the last year before the first expansion, the 16 teams needed about 160 pitchers. This year, the 28 teams are carrying more than 280.

The A’s Alderson cited ineffectiveness, inconsistency and injuries, and said: “You really need about 16 or 17 pitchers to keep a 10-man staff going all year. Now [with two more teams in ‘98] you’re talking about another 33, 34 guys. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Many are coming from the low minors, leading to mistakes in judgment and location, situations in which they are often working behind in the count with repertoires not complete enough to recover.

“We’re rushing pitchers by necessity, and that’s not good,” Dodger Vice President Fred Claire said. “I’m not knocking the American League, but the type of scoring you see in that league is a reflection of the lack of pitching, and that’s a concern.

“I think of an Orel Hershiser spending five or six years in the minors, and now you’re got guys jumping to the majors right from A ball. You can’t be prepared in that time. Unless you’ve pitched in college or have overpowering stuff, you need 600 or 700 innings in the minors to establish a foundation.

“I mean, the lack of pitching has thrown off the entire balance.”

In other words, managerial decisions have become that much more complex. Do you play for a run early when five-run leads are seldom safe? The book?

“Throw it out,” New York Yankee Manager Joe Torre said.

With a few exceptions, there has been a slow deterioration from the NL’s 3.76 ERA and the AL’s 3.87 of pre-expansion 1960.

Consider that the major league runs-per-game average jumped 12% in ‘93, when the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins joined the National League, and it has increased every year since.

“I think the key thing is that the middle relief pitching is very bad,” Baltimore General Manager Pat Gillick said.

“The [Nos.] 6, 7 and 8 pitchers on almost every staff aren’t very good, and it’s in the middle innings that these high-scoring games are getting out of hand.

“There’s not enough pitchers to fill the spots, and that’s why you see veteran guys going from team to team.”

Finding work after they’ve been released because of their work.

MUSCLING UP

Vaughn, the Boston Red Sox’s first baseman and the AL’s most valuable player last year, is typical of the modern slugger:

He is 6 feet 1 and 240 pounds, with a batting cage and weight room at his house, a defensive end in double-knits.

Vaughn likes to say that he considers Thomas, Belle and himself the league’s heavyweights, feeding off each other, but they are not alone.

“Look at Mark McGwire,” said Torborg. “I was in a weight room with him once before a game and he was warming up with 85-pound dumbbells.

“I need a dolly to lift an 85-pound weight.”

Virtually every team now has a weight room and strength coach. Players lift before and after games. The long-held belief in baseball that lifting destroyed flexibility has been discarded.

Guys are bigger and stronger. Even the comparatively smaller guys are stronger. Is it all weightlifting? Lenny Dykstra, the currently sidelined little big man of the Philadelphia Phillies, openly bragged about how juices had made him stronger. He didn’t say what those juices were.

Said White Sox broadcaster Ken Harrelson, talking about the 6-5, 260-pound Thomas: “He gets more hits on bad swings than anyone in the history of baseball. That’s how strong he is.”

The strength has contributed to a certain arrogance and confidence at the plate. The best of the home run hitters know they don’t have to pull the ball to get it out. And it doesn’t matter what the count is. Hitters of all sizes seldom shorten their swings with two strikes. They are taking full-bore swings at 0 and 2 as if it were 2 and 0. There is no stigma to the strikeout.

“A guy who hits 30 homers and strikes out 150 times knows he’s in line for a raise,” Philadelphia General Manager Lee Thomas said. “Everybody is swinging for the fences as if it’s tee-ball.”

And everybody, said Pittsburgh Pirate coach Rich Donnelly, is a body builder.

“Pretty soon they’ll even be out there lifting between innings,” he said.

ZONED OUT

At his Anaheim Stadium locker recently, veteran American League umpire Jim Evans asked:

“If we’ve reduced the strike zone, if we’ve made it so small, why are there more confrontations between hitters and umpires than between pitchers and umpires?”

Good question, but it doesn’t change the opinion of many in baseball that pitchers who are fully capable of getting themselves in trouble are being aided in that process by a smaller strike zone, the reluctance of umpires to call the high strike, defined in the rules as the mid-point between the belt and shoulder as a “batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.”

It’s a pitch, Evans said, that has historically never been called and that the pitchers don’t want because they don’t want hitters getting used to swinging at a pitch up in the zone, one they can drive.

The A’s Alderson, for one, suggested Evans may be self-serving with that contention and more concerned about the arguments that could develop if they started calling the high strike.

“The fact of the matter is that the high strike is basically a pitch most hitters can’t handle, and if the umpires called it,” Alderson said, “it would dramatically [decrease] offensive production and the time of games.”

Inexplicably, baseball went the other way in the spring, announcing that the strike zone would be lowered from mid-knee to the bottom of the knee, but that has not seemed to produce more strikes or fewer runs.

In addition, most general managers believe the strike zone to be smaller in the offensive-minded AL than NL, where the umpires seem to be more generous with the width of the plate.

“If you polled the umpires, they’d be in favor of calling the biggest strike zone the rules committee would allow,” Evans said. “The current zone has evolved according to what the game demands.

“Like anything else, there are cycles in baseball, and it would be foolish to make big changes based on two or three years.”

PARK PLACE

San Diego Padre hitting coach Merv Rettenmund says designers of Coors Field made only one mistake--in addition to putting it in mile-high Denver.

“They should have put a Fenway Park wall around the entire outfield,” he said.

Whether that would have been enough to contain the missiles that have made Coors baseball’s leading launching pad is doubtful.

The mile-high game is an aberration, compounding the home run statistics, but balls are flying out elsewhere too.

With baseball’s building boom designed to capture the aura of the old ballparks, the game is being played the way the old parks played, amid cozier dimensions.

Of 1995’s top 13 parks for home runs, five have opened since 1989. In addition, fences have been brought in or lowered in San Diego, St. Louis, Montreal, Houston, Oakland and San Francisco, while the familiar homer havens in Detroit, Minnesota, Anaheim, Seattle, Chicago (Wrigley Field) and Boston remain just that.

“I look at all these ballparks now, and they’re all made for the long ball,” Phillie General Manager Thomas said. “If that gets the fans in, so be it.”

But there’s nothing quite like Coors, where 153 homers have been hit in 42 games this season.

“It’s clearly not a normal place to play,” Claire said. “The whole psychological aspect changes.

“Pitchers don’t believe they can keep the ball in the park, and hitters don’t believe the ball will stay in the park. The next time we play a four-game series there, we might send our starter in early to get acclimated or carry an extra pitcher or two. You have to rethink strategy, be prepared.”

BAT WRACK

Who knows for sure if the ball is livelier? There is certainty about the bats, however.

Hitters are ordering models with bigger barrels and thinner handles--lighter for more bat speed.

“We’re all looking for that because it’s the bat speed that creates home runs,” Houston first baseman Jeff Bagwell said.

Call it a byproduct of the lighter aluminum bats that the current generation of players became conditioned to as amateurs.

The thin-handle wood models break frequently but have clearly contributed to the home run onslaught, or as Pittsburgh’s Donnelly said:

“Instead of aluminum we went to cork.”

CONCUSSION CONCLUSION

All of it is a factor--from bad pitching to livelier baseballs to stronger hitters to smaller ballparks to lighter bats to tighter strike zones.

Runs and home runs are the name of the game, what the game seems to want.

Management may look at it when the season is over, as Selig noted, but don’t expect changes.

Well, there may be one.

At the Elias Sports Bureau in New York, where baseball’s official statistics are housed, an official reflected on the first-half rampage, the continuing rampage of the last few years, and said:

“We’re going to have to look for computers with bigger memory.”

Times staff writer Houston Mitchell contributed to this story.

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By the Numbers in the Nineties

AMERICAN LEAGUE TEAM PITCHING AVERAGES AT THE ALL-STAR BREAK

*--*

YEAR ERA G SV CG IP H ER HR BB SO 1996 5.10 86 21 5 775 846 439 106 345 529 1995 4.73 66 16 4 603 627 317 75 259 413 1994 4.88 86 19 8 769 820 417 97 325 518 1993 4.35 86 22 6 772 790 373 79 302 489 1992 4.02 86 24 8 780 766 348 73 301 460 1991 4.05 80 22 7 722 708 325 70 280 449 1990 3.93 82 23 6 735 725 321 69 276 461

*--*

NATIONAL LEAGUE TEAM PITCHING AVERAGES AT THE ALL-STAR BREAK

*--*

YEAR ERA G SV CG IP H ER HR BB SO 1996 4.18 86 21 5 778 780 361 87 283 596 1995 4.17 68 16 4 615 614 285 64 225 448 1994 4.18 86 22 5 781 793 363 83 287 560 1993 4.06 86 22 7 783 792 353 71 271 505 1992 3.47 86 22 7 786 733 303 55 277 520 1991 3.68 80 22 5 727 684 297 58 268 462 1990 3.91 80 20 7 727 719 316 68 265 470

*--*

AMERICAN LEAGUE TEAM OFFENSE AVERAGES AT THE ALL-STAR BREAK*--*

YEAR AVG AB R H 2B 3B HR BB SO 1996 .279 3030 474 846 163 17 106 345 529 1995 .269 2334 345 627 118 12 75 259 413 1994 .274 2994 460 820 163 17 97 325 518 1993 .267 2963 410 790 147 17 79 302 489 1992 .259 2963 381 766 140 14 73 301 460 1991 .258 2744 354 708 126 15 70 280 449 1990 .259 2800 358 725 131 16 69 276 461

*--*

NATIONAL LEAGUE TEAM OFFENSE AVERAGES AT THE ALL-STAR BREAK*--*

YEAR AVG AB R H 2B 3B HR BB SO 1996 .261 2983 408 780 144 17 87 283 596 1995 .262 2347 317 614 113 12 64 225 448 1994 .265 2987 400 793 150 20 83 287 560 1993 .264 2996 392 792 141 19 71 271 505 1992 .249 2945 337 733 132 21 55 277 520 1991 .251 2727 331 684 115 19 58 268 462 1990 .259 2774 353 719 124 16 68 265 470

*--*

AN AVERAGE STARTING PITCHING STAFF AT THE 1996 ALL-STAR BREAK *--*

ERA W-L CG IP H ER HR BB SO AMERICAN LEAGUE 5.33 30-32 5 508 575 301 73 208 323 NATIONAL LEAGUE 4.24 30-30 5 524 535 247 59 173 375

*--*

AN AVERAGE BULLPEN AT THE 1996 ALL-STAR BREAK *--*

ERA W-L SV IP H ER HR BB SO AMERICAN LEAGUE 4.65 13-11 21 267 271 138 33 136 206 NATIONAL LEAGUE 4.02 13-12 21 253 245 113 27 110 221

*--*

Researched by HOUSTON MITCHELL / Los Angeles Times