Tuesday Trivia: 40 HRs with fewer strikeouts

[bk400]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

So what do we make of it? That today's players are only hitting this many HRs because they're going for broke?

Or the pitchers are throwing a lot faster and funkier over the past 10 years. And the hitters as a class haven't been able to keep pace on a relative basis.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by bk400

Or the pitchers are throwing a lot faster and funkier over the past 10 years. And the hitters as a class haven't been able to keep pace on a relative basis.

Yeah, I think it probably says more about pitching than anything else.

Back in the day, many pitchers only had two pitches--fastball and a curve or some other off-speed pitch.

Now there are so many more options to think about from most pitchers, and fastballs tend to be faster. Pitchers are no longer pitching complete games on a regular basis. Instead, you have 4 pitchers or more per game, coming in fresh and exploiting hitters weaknesses (lefties vs. lefty hitters, etc).