Yankees lead the way as pitchers take steps to catch up with hitters

The Yankees have joined all of baseball in a parade of pitches leaving the ballpark. And for the second season in a row, MLB will eclipse itself for the most home runs ever hit in a season. You didn’t expect pitchers just to sit there and take it, did you?

The Yankees currently have six regulars in their lineup, led by Aaron Judge‘s 31, who are on pace to hit 20 or more home runs during the regular season. But that’s kindergarten when compared to a team like the Houston Astros who have at least eight.

The home run explosion is easily the biggest story in baseball this year. Fans leave work early to get to the ballpark, so they can watch Judge take batting practice. The Home Run Derby eclipsed and then shattered all previous viewership records. The home run has taken over the game.

The naysayers will immediately jump on the “they must be juicing again” bandwagon. Let them go there. Real baseball fans know that this is a new breed of athletes dominating their sport, similar to when Michael Jordan arrived changing basketball forever.  Figure out twenty ways to dunk a basketball and become financially secure, forever.

Hit a baseball over the wall consistently, become an instant millionaire. And it’s not only the fans who are happy to see this brand of baseball arriving. Managers and front office personnel are drumming the same beat as the late Earl Weaver used to – forget the one-out sac bunt, give me that ole three run home run.

Strikeouts be damned. And managers are okay with that too, even when a swing and miss leave two runners stranded because there’s always the hope that a Mark Trumbo or Chris Davis will do it next time. Or until recently, that Yankees first baseman, Chris Carter, would somehow see the ball hit his bat, sailing into the bleachers.

But here’s the rub

Major league pitchers are not stupid. They know when they see something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it is a duck. And they know too that this particular duck tends to hit fastballs for home runs.

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And while every team including the Yankees has a least two guys who can hit the gun consistently at 100+, the old axiom in baseball will always ring true. The harder you throw ’em, the farther they’ll go. And hitters have come to learn that if they wait long enough, they are bound to get a pitch they square up on.

Ask any pitcher on the Yankees what their best and the most favored pitch is and they’ll tell you, it’s my fastball. And why not. It’s the easiest pitch to control, and it puts the least strain on a pitcher’s arm and elbow.

So if the trend with all these bombs being hit is to be broken, the pitchers are the ones who need to adapt. Easier said than done, but the Yankees are in the midst of developing a strategy designed to thwart the home run explosion. And it just might be a plan to turn the pendulum back the other way.

The Rothschild Experiment

Yankees pitching coach, Larry Rothschild, has always flown under the radar during his tenure with the organization. To the point where he is so invisible that he often attracts attention for seemingly doing nothing to improve the staff under his charge.

Not so fast, though, Because Rothschild has an idea and he has the proof behind it to prove it true. In a riveting article published by Baseball Insider, Rothschild sat down with Sports Illustrated’s, Tom Verducci, explaining:

"“Fastballs get hit,” he said, according to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. “It’s amazing to me to see guys throwing in the upper 90s and they get hit. I don’t know how these guys do it. That’s how good major league hitters are. They have adjusted to velocity. To hit upper 90s you have to gear up for upper 90s. So hitters are going up there to gear up for velocity. And when they do that, they can hit it no matter how hard you throw.”"

Rothschild’s solution? Very simple, more sliders. And in case no one’s noticed, the Yankees have the highest slider rate in the league: more than 25 percent of their pitches. According to Statcast, the league has hit just .218 on sliders this year, compared to .274 on fastballs. And the Mets, according to the same story are tied for the fifth-highest fastball rate in the league but rank 28th in ERA.

Only a beginning

The Yankees experiment is by no means complete. But it has the makings of putting hitters out of the driver’s seat and in need to make an another adjustment in their approach and pitch selection.

Baseball fans have a love affair with the home run and for a good reason. There’s nothing more exciting in baseball.

But we ‘ve reached a point where there are players who have no business hitting 20 or more home runs. At the risk of heresy, Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro, just to keep it within the Yankees, might be two of them.

And just so you know, I’d like to see Didi hit 30. But at the same time as a fan of baseball, I look forward to the ongoing tug-of-war between pitchers and hitters as both seek to maintain supremacy in a game that doesn’t like aberrations in favor of either.