O/T - Yawn..another no hitter for 2012

[ctownboy]

D. Bergin,

I blame the PED era and Free Agency for what you are talking about.

I started seriously watching baseball at the start of the 1975 World Series (there is a story why but I wont tell it now). Back then, you could break players down into two categories; home run hitters and non-home run hitters.

Guys who were home run hitters you could expect and understand why they struck out so much. With run scoring at a premium you could also put up with a home run hitter striking out a lot because of the possibility of him hitting a home run.

The non-home run hitters, however, were a different story. Those guys were expected to try to get on base no matter what and to NOT strike out. They were expected to try and bunt for base hits, drop bunts down for sacrifices, take walks, move runners over and do the other little things. The one thing they were expected NOT to do was strike out.

Then came the Steroid Era. The time when EVERY player thought they were home run hitters. The time when Managers didn't mind the little guys going up to the plate and swinging from the heels. The time when the little guys didn't choke up with two strikes and just try and make contact. The time when little guys didn't move forward in the batters box so as to try and not be out in front of a change up or swing over the top of a curve ball.

The time when hitting home runs meant players made more as Free Agents and got bigger raises in Salary Arbitration.

For about 20 years EVERY player thought they were home run hitters and were allowed to play home run derby every time up to the plate. The minor leaguers coming up saw this. The college players saw this. The high school players saw this and the Little Leaguers saw this. So, for 20 years less time and effort was put into the fundamentals of the game.

Then, the anti-steroid rules were put into place and the little guys didn't know what to do.

They couldn't hit home runs as easily and didn't know the fundamentals from the pre-steroid era. So, they flail away, make unproductive outs ans strike out at a prodigious rate. All the while, scoring goes down because of this.

Also, pitchers now throw harder. So the combination of pitchers throwing harder, more relief pitchers being used, more shifts being employed on defense and non-home run hitters not knowing the fundamentals has caused no hitters to go up and scoring to go down.

I say in five to 10 years, scoring will go back up because, by that time, young kids will have learned that the home run era in MLB is over and that knowing the fundamentals and being smart instead of aggressive is the way to play and score.

David