This Baseball Season, Power Has Come From the Mound

Colorado Rockies ace Ubaldo Jimenez allowed three runs in six innings against the Toronto Blue Jays this past weekend. He hadn’t given up three runs in a start this season prior to this outing.

Backed by the Rockies bats, he still managed to improve his record to 12-1, a Major League Baseball best. His ERA increased to a unbelievably sparkling 1.16, and is five walks issued ballooned his WHIP (Walks/Hits Per Inning Pitched) to a still microscopic 0.98.

Twelve wins in 13 starts.

He won 15 games all of last year in 33 starts. He’s given up only 12 runs and watched just three balls leave the park in his 93 innings pitched.

He’s relinquished only 57 hits. He’s the best pitcher in baseball. His statistics are clearly mind-boggling, but many pitchers in baseball are following his lead.

For the most part, steroids are out of baseball. Hitters are still hitting. But the league-wide batting average is 11 points lower than it was during the 2000 season (.259 to .270)–the heart of the juicing Era.

The AL East’s three powerhouses take the podium as far as runs scored are concerned. Surprising teams are near the top in hitting, like the Cincinnati Reds .

Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera has had an incredible season, clubbing 19 homers and driving in 56 RBI while hitting .330 thus far.

But the hitters that are behind him offensively aren’t the usual names. Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista has five more homers (18) and five more RBI (45) than he had in 113 games last season.

Corey Hart of the Milwaukee Brewers has 17 homers and 47 RBI, numbers that are far more likely to be associated with teammates Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun .

The Jays' Vernon Wells , White Sox' Paul Konerko , and Rangers’ Josh Hamilton are having bounce-back seasons offensively, but the usual suspects have been very underwhelming to begin the season.

Why is this? There are two plausible reasons. First, it could be that more than normal are just in offensive slumps. Second, and more likely, more pitchers are baffling hitters.

Good pitching has beaten good hitting, for the most part, and far more regularly than during the early 2000′s and, especially, the late 1990′s.

The likes of Randy Johnson , Roger Clemens , Greg Maddux , Tom Glavine , John Smoltz , and Pedro Martinez passed through the steroid era with flying colors. But few others did.

Nowadays, entire pitching staffs are overpowering the opposition. Take the San Diego Padres, for example. Their starting rotation’s ERA is 3.25 , and their entire staff’s is 3.00 . Thirteen other teams have ERA’s at or lower than 4.01.

The average ERA in the majors is 4.19. From 2000-2009, the best mark was 4.27, which occurred in 2005. This rapid increase is due in large part to the decrease in league-wide batting average.

Aside from Cabrera, many of the top power hitters do not boast eye-pleasing averages. Bautista is hitting .227. Hart is hitting .262. Carlos Pena , with 14 homers, is hitting .195 for the Tampa Bay Rays. And Mark Reynolds , who has 15 homers and 45 rbi’s for the Arizona Diamondbacks, is hitting just .218.

These four hitters are notoriously strikeout-prone, but despite their ability to repeatedly swing and miss, more effective repertoires than ever before cause the rampant rate of whiffs.

Some hitters, like Reynolds and Pena, can hit the ball a long ways and get timely hits, but don’t do much else. Still, these types aren’t the majority.

Producers that usually hit for average, like the Yankees Mark Teixeira , aren’t. Offensive funks are part of the game, but, especially in Teixeira’s case, they do not predominantly happen for more than a third of the season.

Pitchers like Boston’s Clay Buchholz have polished their repertoire, jumping onto the map either coming out of nowhere or off rough seasons. More pitchers have sharper offspeed pitches, faster fastballs, and better location than early this century when ERA’s consistently hovered in the mid 4′s.

Sixty pitchers with a minimum of nine starts under their belt have ERA’s below four this season. A majority of them have an assortment of pitches that keep hitters guessing.

And it doesn’t help from a offensive player’s standpoint that the parks are getting bigger. More are pitcher-friendly, like San Diego’s Petco Park. But even well-known hitters parks are favoring pitchers this year.

Many of the pitchers considered to be the best in baseball have been this year. Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals, Matt Cain of the Giants, Josh Johnson of the Marlins, and David Price of the Rays were all expected to dazzle.

But how about Mariners cast-off and current Cub Carlos Silva ? Nationals workhorse yet historically mediocre Livan Hernandez ? The Mariners' Doug Fister and Jason Vargas ?

No, but each has been very effective this season. Fister is the only one of these four that is playing with his original organization. And he’s also young, at 26.

This combination of being homegrown and youthful has related to the pattern of success among pitchers this season.

Five of the top six ERA leaders in baseball–rookie Jaime Carcia , Jimenez, Cain, Price, and Johnson–came up through their respective organizations.

Along with Jimenez and Cain, five of the other six pitchers to throw either a no or one-hitter this season are under 30 years old (Mat Latos , Dallas Braden , Johnny Cueto , Armando Galarraga , and Jonathon Neise ) and everyone but Gallaraga are pitching for their original organization, as documented in an article by Sports Illustrated ‘s Tom Verducci .

So what’s my point to these statistical analyses? Good pitching hasn’t been this widespread in more than 20 years. Many pitchers have struggled and some offenses are terrible.

Some offenses are so good top to bottom that they beat solid pitching regularly. But this is undoubtedly The Year of the Pitcher, and it all starts with the magnificent Ubaldo Jimenez.