It's All About The Pitching!!!

As a true lifelong baseball fan, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the MLB playoffs this season. This despite the very ugly and embarrassing exit of my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. It has been a pure joy during the "year of the homerun" to watch the teams with dominate starting pitching continue to advance round after round. With the Astros and their "big three" just a win away from meeting up with the Nationals and their "big three" starters we are set to watch some epic pitching duels in the World Series.

Once again, when the games really matter, the old saying of "good pitching beats good hitting" or even the old saying of "defense wins championships" has proven to be true. This has always been the case and likely always will be the case. Of course, there have been exceptions to the rules throughout the history of the game, but for the most part it's always true.

By now, some of you might be wondering what that has to do with youth baseball and how it relates to the readers of this blog, whether that be you as a coach or you as a parent. Well, what it has to do with youth baseball is that over the last 2-4 years I have seen more and more players, coaches, and hitting instructors worried about launch angle and exit velocity than I have people who have been taught or are teaching bat control, choking up, and putting the ball in play.

Additionally, what we have seen this postseason, and for the most part throughout history, is that having true starting pitchers that go deep into games has been a key to winning. During the regular season, we see teams use a ton of pitchers, some even with this "opener" concept, where guys come in and throw as hard as they can for as long as they can and then it's the next man up. But where are these teams now? How many of them are left standing when it really matters? This max velocity, let it all hang out, pitching mentality is also creeping into youth baseball.

Here's the thing folks, we are seeing these regular season MLB tendencies trickle down into youth baseball and it just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm personally convinced that we are just 1-3 years away from the beginning of a complete turnaround in the game of baseball. Baseball always has been and always will be a repeating cycle. I predict that when our 8-12 year old players now are at the MLB playing age of 22-25 years old that the game will have flipped back to more of a speed and agility type game with contact rates and location of pitches and changing speeds being more of the focus.

But Coach Trout, what evidence do you have of this? For one, look at what's successful. That approach is what is working when in matters. When push comes to shove and teams have to win the formula that teams are using is the following - great starting pitchers that go deep into the game, good defensive teams, and teams that don't strikeout as much. You want data to prove it?

Of the final four teams in the playoffs (Houston, New York, St. Louis, Washington) the Cardinals had the #1 defense in MLB this season, the Astros the #3 ranked, and the Nationals the #9 ranked defense. The exception being the Yankees who ranked 20th in defense, but they were also second in HR's during the regular season and only had to beat the #1 ranked home run team in the Minnesota Twins who consequently had the 26th ranked defensive team. Play good defense you win games.

So let's look at starting pitching then. Again you find the same teams. The Nationals starting pitchers ranked 2nd in baseball with the Astros right behind them at 3rd. The Cardinals were a close 5th place and then we have the Yankees down at 15th, but the Yankees only had to beat the 26th ranked defensive and the 11th ranked pitching team in MLB in the Twins.

And then my final one, contact rate. And you could probably guess. The Astros ranked #1 making contact 79.2% of the time and the Nationals came in at 5th. The Yankees and the Cardinals came in at 14th and 15th respectively, which is partly why they were dominated by the Astros and Nationals elite pitching staffs.

There is some statistical data to back up my thinking, but also lets just look for a second at who's actually putting up these pitching stats? Are they the 'young guns' who have just been called up to the big leagues? Is it a group of hard throwing, max effort, short outing guys who "blow it out" for as long as they can and then turn it over to the bullpen guy to do the same for an inning or two and then make another change? Nope, wrong again. It's the veteran "old school pitchers". The top three guys in the Nationals pitching rotation which ranked 2nd this year are Max Scherzer age 35 - 11 yrs in MLB, Stephen Strasburg age 31 - 9 yrs in MLB, and Patrick Corbin age 30 - 6 yrs in MLB. What about the #3 ranked Astros? The Astros are led by 36 yr old - 14 yr pro - Justin Verlander, 29 year old - 6 yr pro Gerrit Cole, and 35 yr old - 15 yr pro - Zack Grienke. Finally, the 5th ranked starting pitching staff, the St. Louis Cardinals featured Jack Flaherty 24 yrs old - 2 yr pro, Adam Wainwright 38 yrs old - 13 yr pro, and Miles Mikolas 31 yrs old - 4 yr pro (4 more pro years in Japan). That's an average age of 32 and 8.9 years of pro experience. Those are hardly the ages and experience level of the young guns that the minor leagues have been turning lately.

So here is where my theory really comes to a head. MLB has a fan viewership problem currently. TV ratings are down as is actual attendance in ballparks. Why is this the case? Length of games and pace of play are the two biggest reasons sited. What makes baseball games go longer and what makes them "boring"? Well, the number one thing that makes games go longer is the pitching changes. We already sit through 2.5 minute commercial breaks after each half inning and now we have 4-6 pitching changes a game by each manager totaling another 10-12 of those 2.5 minute commercial breaks. That makes for roughly 30 commercial breaks in a game for a total of 1 hour 15 minutes of zero action time.

Secondly, what makes the game boring is when there are 10-15 strikeouts a game by each team because teams do not focus on contact but instead are worried about launch angle and hitting the ball out of the yard. Wanna know how much this has grown in the past decade. In 2019 each MLB team struck out an average of 8.81 times per game compared to 2009 when each team struck out on average just 6.91 times per game. That means a third of the time there is literally NO action because the ball is not in play. That's up from a quarter of the time just 10 years ago.

So, why am I so convinced that the game will cycle back around and that launch angles will change back in favor of putting the ball in play? Why do I think our hitters will go back toward the Tony Gwinn's and Pete Rose's of the worlds? Why do I think teams will look for starting pitchers that of course can touch the mid 90's, but they can also hold something back and still be able to pitch deep into the 7th or 8th inning? Two big reasons - 1. the game has to go back to that way or owners will start losing big money on people not in the stands and less TV dollars for broadcast rights 2. because it's the formula that has always won and will always win. Who doesn't want to win?

All of that brings me back to the question, but Coach Trout, what does all of this have to do with youth baseball? Well, if I'm right, then we better be teaching our kids now the right way to do things for the future. We need to be less focused on teaching some 12 year old kid a 32 degree launch angle to try and hit a ball over a 250 ft. fence when they literally only have enough strength to hit the ball 200 ft. at best. Instead we should be teaching the kid to hit through the ball and creating natural backspin to allow line drives to carry into the gaps for doubles and the occasional triple (which for me is the most exciting offensive play in baseball not a home run). We also better be teaching and training our pitchers (see other blog where I mention building pitch counts) to hit spots, use their off-speed effectively, and training them to go deep (80-100+ pitches) into games. I know for one, that's how I've been coaching my child and the kids on my team!

As always, I'm open to discussion about these topics. It's how we learn and grow! I'll admit I could be biased on this topic because it's where I hope the game goes, but this post-season sure has seemed to re-emphasize that good pitching and defense beats good hitting!

Thank you for reading - good luck as many of you wrap up your fall season over the next few weeks!