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'New' strike zone helped out Nomo
When Hideo Nomo no-hit the Orioles in his Red Sox debut this week, he made a prophet of Ernie Harwell. Let me explain. Back during spring training, while gathering impressions on baseball's return to the traditional strike zone, I interviewed the Tigers' Hall of Fame broadcaster. When asked which pitchers would be helped most by the return of the high strike, Harwell named Nomo before mentioning anybody else. Harwell called all 32 of Nomo's outings last year during a one-season stopover with the Tigers. Obviously, the octogenarian play-by-play man still has a keen eye for the game. "Most pitchers would be helped by it," Harwell told me, "but a pitcher like Nomo, he throws a high fastball all the time. It should help him greatly. He likes to throw that split-finger that drops. Now, if it stays up, that's great." All it took Nomo was one regular season start to prove Harwell right. Indeed, just four AL pitchers -- Rick Helling, Orlando Hernandez, Eric Milton and Paul Abbott -- had more pronounced flyball/groundball ratios last season than Nomo. Despite a drop in his velocity, Nomo still knows how to work up in the zone better than most pitchers. And Harwell still knows the game better than most broadcasters.
The future is nowIf the Indians are to reclaim supremacy in the AL Central after a one-year hiatus, they'll need several question marks to turn into exclamation points. Start with Carsten Charles Sabathia, better known as C.C.The 20-year-old left-hander makes his major league debut Sunday, when he starts against the Orioles after a standout spring. Sabathia, 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds, has yet to pitch above Class AA, but he has been so impressive in his first two professional seasons, some are calling him a longshot candidate for AL Rookie of the Year. With the Cleveland rotation again racked by injury and with Steve Karsay deemed a better fit for the bullpen, general manager John Hart struggled with the decision of whether to rush Sabathia or not. "We had to ask ourselves: Do we take him with his good stuff and ability to attack hitters?" Hart told me. "He's got a bright future and there's a tremendous upside, but the baseball side of you says he's got 230 innings [in the minors] and he's 20 years old." In the end Hart went with his gut and ignored his head, which preached patience. The prospect of adding a young lefty with a 98 mph fastball and an eye-popping curve was just too enticing. "It's not the worst thing in the world to take a guy for a short period of time and get him some experience and be able to back him up with some bullpen arms," Hart said. "I think he could handle that. Realize the following, though: One, he's not fully developed. He's not mechanically flawless, although his mechanics are very good. He's not where he's going to be with his changeup and breaking ball and his command, all the things that time builds up as you go through. At the same time there's no denying the kid's got terrific stuff and he's a very mature kid, but he is a kid." A kid who holds the key, perhaps, to the AL Central race.
Suits of armorThe Commissioner's Office made a grand spectacle this spring with its announcement that, along with changes in the strike zone and a crackdown on beanballs, it would restrict the size of the space-age armor batters like to wear.However, in cutting the maximum size down to 10 inches except in pre-approved, injury-related cases, baseball stopped short of meaningful change. Astros second baseman Craig Biggio, for instance, merely had to cut an inch from the Gladiator-style shield he wears on his left arm. "It's not a big deal," Biggio told me. "Mine just looked like it was big, but it wasn't big. Cut down an inch, not a big deal. If that's what the rules are, you abide by the rules. I'm just trying to protect the elbow and triceps, that's all. As long as that elbow's protected, it's fine." Without naming names, retired umpire Larry Barnett, a 30-year veteran, lashed out at the practice. "So many of these guys wear that stuff for no other purpose than so they can get hit and get on base," Barnett told me. "There's no purpose to it. I think that's why a guy leans over the plate. If he has it here [near the shoulder] and all the way down his arm, what's he afraid of?" Biggio bristles when people insinuate he wears the heavy padding to gain a competitive advantage, but the data indicates he has just the same. Entering the season Biggio had been hit by 169 pitches in his standout career, 15 more than the next-closest active player (Andres Galarraga). "It's just protection," Biggio said. "When I started wearing it, I got hit right above the elbow, and Danny Darwin hit me the next day in the same spot. I said, 'That's it. I've got to wear something.' What goes unnoticed is when you get hit there, your swing's messed up for a week. Even if you go out and play, you can't play like you want to play. If you can wear something to keep from getting hurt, that's fine." Ralph Nelson, who oversees umpiring issues for the league office, claims the padding is only supposed to protect players from aggravating prior injuries, not from preventing those in the future. Forcing all hitters to petition for the right to wear padding of any sort would have been a much-needed step in returning the inner third of the plate to the shell-shocked pitchers. Instead, look for more of the same. Mike Berardino covers the baseball beat for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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