WE HAVE LIFTOFF . . . AGAIN

By ROSS NEWHAN

June 13, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Call it a Millennium Mash--an anvil chorus of hits, runs and home runs emanating from major league ballparks this season.

Call it an extension of baseball’s ongoing emphasis on hitting at the expense of pitching, creating what many insist is what fans want but what Atlanta Brave General Manager John Schuerholz describes as an “offensive sideshow” eroding the game’s beauty and balance.

“It’s arena baseball,” Schuerholz said of a season in which a touchdown and field goal do not guarantee victory.

On Wednesday, for instance, the Kansas City Royals, who have never been compared to Murderer’s Row, outlasted the St. Louis Cardinals, 17-13, in a game with 37 hits; the Colorado Rockies defeated the Seattle Mariners, 16-11, in a game with 10 home runs, and the Arizona Diamondbacks edged the Chicago Cubs in a virtual pitchers’ duel, 8-7, amid 30 hits.

These were low-scoring affairs compared to Seattle’s earlier thrashing of the Detroit Tigers, 22-6; the Cleveland Indians’ 20-12 demolition of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and the Cincinnati Reds’ scorebook-devouring romp in Colorado, 24-12.

It’s a numbing litany that Schuerholz contends has put baseball in the category of a “slow-pitch beer league” and is among the game’s most serious problems.

But amid the hit parade of the ‘90s, only the magnitude is new.

With the average number of runs and home runs per game threatening records, the contributing factors are familiar:

* Expansion-thinned pitching.

* Bigger and stronger athletes.

* Smaller ballparks.

* Tighter strike zones.

* And the elusive belief that the ball is livelier.

“Titleists” said Angel pitcher Tim Belcher, comparing them to a golf ball.

Or as Bert Blyleven, speaking from the experience of having given up 50 home runs in 1986 and 430 during a career in which he also won 287 games, put it:

“The mound is lower, the parks are smaller, the hitters are stronger and the pitchers are younger and learning at the major league level, but the most important reason [for the offensive explosion] is that the cows are in much better shape now. I know. I live in Minnesota [as a broadcaster for the Twins]. I have the opportunity to visit the farms. The cows are firmer and stronger. They don’t just graze. They run laps.”

How shrewd of Blyleven to know the cowhide with which baseballs have been wrapped since 1974 comes from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Or was this simply his tongue-in-cheek way of saying the balls are wound tighter and capable of orbit?

Belcher and Blyleven are not alone in that belief, but former New York Yankee general manager Gene Michael said he didn’t buy the juiced-ball theory.

“If the ball really was juiced, it would have to have been approved by the owners, and everybody knows that none of them can keep a secret,” he said.

Doug Kralik, general manager of the Costa Rica factory in which Rawlings Sporting Goods manufactures the balls, insists there has never been a change in the specifications.

“We ain’t got no rabbits in here,” he said.

Perhaps, but the missile that is being delivered by an expansion-diluted group of major league pitchers is definitely jumping.

Who needs hot weather when you have high octane?

Before the weekend:

* The average number of home runs per game was 2.3, slightly higher than the 1996 record of 2.2, and the average number of runs per game was 10.3, highest in the ‘90s and the second highest since the 1930 record of 11.1.

* Teams had scored 10 or more runs 184 times and there had been 58 grand slams, almost one a day--a grand madness in which Ken Griffey Jr. hit slams in consecutive games, Robin Ventura connected in both games of a doubleheader and Fernando Tatis delivered two in the same inning.

* The ongoing blitzkrieg raised the cumulative earned-run average of the 30 teams almost half a run per game--from last year’s 4.42 to 4.78. Only three teams had an ERA of less than 4.00, and 11 were over 5.00--a stunning jump from the three of 1998.

“There are a lot of teams and not a lot of pitching,” Cleveland General Manager John Hart said.

“We used to have an adage in baseball that you never trade an everyday player for a pitcher, but I guarantee now that we would all make that trade because there are so few quality pitchers and almost all of us are looking for pitching at one time or another. If we opened up Japan, Korea and Cuba as free markets it would help.”

With many teams carrying 12 pitchers to cope with the offensive onslaught, the recycling of fringe pitchers and the force-feeding of young pitchers is rampant.

The low-budget Twins, Florida Marlins and Montreal Expos, for instance, have virtually entire staffs of triple-A or lower experience.

And the philosophy is all wrong, Blyleven said.

“There’s too much babying of pitchers,” he said. “You don’t see anyone pitching 200 innings anymore. There’s no emphasis on complete games.

“If I was a general manager, I’d have all my double-A pitchers working every fourth day so that they’d learn how to pitch without their best stuff. Nothing is guaranteed. You have to learn to survive when you’re not at your best.”

The diluted pitching, of course, is a major aspect of the offensive assault, but this is also the direction baseball chose.

Two major rule changes were aimed at handicapping the pitching and creating more offense.

* The mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 inches after the 1968 season in which Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title at .301, and Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA characterized the pitching domination.

* The American League game was altered by creation of the designated hitter in 1973.

In addition, widespread use of the unyielding aluminum bat at the amateur level has tended to spawn generations of young pitchers 1) reluctant to pitch inside, a lost art; 2) focused on speed-gun ratings rather than the rudiments of movement and deception, and 3) handicapped by what Schuerholz describes as the “incredible shrinking strike zone.”

All of that and more, the Atlanta general manager added, has created a “horrible situation” in which much of the precision, finesse and execution that long distinguished baseball has been sacrificed on the altar of offense.

Now, he said . . .

“You have hitters--many the size of monsters through weightlifting and use of supplements--standing on top of the plate, wearing protective padding and prepared to charge the mound with impunity if you throw inside.

“The ball, in the opinion of people who handle it, is harder and slicker. The mound is not high enough to remove the stress of delivery, so that we’re sending young pitchers to surgery instead of a higher level.

“If we acknowledge that we don’t have enough pitchers and that we can’t take time to train them because they have to be rushed to the big leagues, why not widen the plate or raise the mound to give them some advantage?

“I think it’s as serious a problem as we have and needs to be addressed. I mean, maybe I’m wrong, maybe my vision is constrained by my grounding in tradition.

“I remember baseball the way it used to be, but maybe I should step aside. Maybe the fans like it this way. I’m just not sure there’s any evidence of that, and we’re definitely not giving them any alternative.”

The Braves, of course, have won seven consecutive division titles based on the strength of their pitching in the face of the increased offense. But Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine have struggled this year, as umpires have responded to a preseason directive from the commissioner’s office and tended to narrow their east-west zone to rule-book parameters, depriving the two Atlanta stylists of the strike call they previously received on pitches anywhere from two to six inches wide of the zone--contributing to Schuerholz’s overall ire.

Sandy Alderson, who wrote the directive as baseball’s executive vice president, said there has been more uniformity on the in and out call but not the hoped-for consistency on the high strike, forcing pitchers to work belt-high or lower, where they are vulnerable to the long ball.

“We have to be careful about the balance we’re trying to maintain,” Alderson said, referring to the offensive onslaught. “We have to be conscious of every exaggeration in scoring, one way or the other. It’s obvious there has been a significant increase, but it’s not something that we need to be alarmed about. There are a lot of factors involved.”

Hart, whose Indians are averaging 6.6 runs a game and symbolize the big-bang era, said it is simply much easier to identify bombers at a time when it is so difficult to locate pitching. He said baseball is now in competition with so many other sports that it would be a mistake to strip fans of the offensive impact in an attempt to re-create the finesse game of another period.

“The biggest conduit we have to the fans is the cable networks, and what are they showing every night--the guy launching it 500 feet,” he said. “Fans like it, kids see it and try to emulate it. It’s an easier game for everyone to understand.

“Look, I love the sport and want the best for it, but I’m sitting here in Cleveland, Ohio, with 323 consecutive sellouts and our fans caught up in the excitement of the way we go about it. Personally, I don’t want to go back to the dead-ball era.”

The Great Home Run Chase of 1998 helped accelerate baseball’s recovery from the long labor dispute and buried the dead-ball era even deeper--not to mention the memory of 1968.

Now Mark McGwire, who hit 70, and Sammy Sosa, who hit 66, are back among a squadron of sluggers creating havoc again for beleaguered pitchers such as Belcher, who has felt the impact and seen it all in his 14 major league seasons.

“I don’t know that Mark McGwire is any more prolific than a Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth or maybe even Frank Howard was in their generation, but there’s definitely more like him,” Belcher said. “Virtually every American League club in particular has three or four guys with 30-homer potential. Heck, a couple years ago a leadoff guy [Brady Anderson] hit 50.

“I mean, the ball’s wound tighter, the parks are smaller, the hitters are bigger and we’re told to enjoy it because the fans love it and we all benefit from it. Well, OK. It’s just hard for us pitchers to figure out exactly how we benefit.”

On the Rise

Major League average for runs per game per decade shown above.

1901-10: 7.88

‘11-20: 7.92

‘21-30: 9.86

‘31-40: 9.69

‘41-50: 8.65

‘51-60: 8.79

‘61-70: 8.11

‘71-80: 8.28

‘81-90: 8.54

‘91-99: 9.45