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Pitching in It's time for all hurlers to learn how to handle the batPosted: Thursday June 20, 2002 3:48 PM
Want to see a great illustration of the difference between the American and National Leagues? Sneak into a ballpark about three and half hours early some day and watch pitchers take batting practice. NL hurlers know that learning to handle the bat might increase their run support, so they take this exercise seriously. A few weeks ago I watched the Phillies turn BP into a starters-against-relievers competition, a combination of a bunting contest and home run derby. It was very entertaining, not the least because relievers Jose Mesa and Ricky Bottalico worked on their trash talking as intensely as their swings. By contrast, AL pitchers don't pick up a bat until roughly two weeks before interleague play begins. Their focus is on finding a helmet that fits and learning how to swing without pulling anything. (Muscles, that is, not pitches.) For many pitchers in the American League, interleague games are the only occasions on which they've been called upon to swing a bat since high school. You can tell from some of the ugly hacks they take. Many AL managers complain that interleague play is inherently unfair because the games in NL parks deprive them of their designated hitters, who are usually run producers with prominent roles in the middle of the order. To me, that's not a huge disadvantage: NL teams don't have a DH either, so in these matchups both teams are playing with the same number of weapons. It's not what AL teams are accustomed to, but it's not a competitive disadvantage, either. Asking players to do something they're not trained for is unfair, however, and that's where the American League is caught short in interleague games. NL pitchers usually aren't sluggers, but they do practice hitting and get to face live pitching on a regular basis. Most experienced NL starters are fairly reliable when it comes to getting down a sacrifice bunt. Some of their AL counterparts barely know which end of the bat to grip. "They do that every day and have sessions to practice that all the time," says White Sox manager Jerry Manuel of NL pitchers. Last Sunday Manuel watched starter Todd Ritchie -- who played three seasons in the senior circuit before this year -- pop up a bunt attempt with a runner on first and none out. "It's difficult for us because we don't have that experience," says Manuel. "They can ask their guys to bunt-and-slash or squeeze. We can't do any of those tricks." The easy answer is for AL teams to have their pitchers work on hitting from the first day of spring training. But that's impractical; besides, hours of BP doesn't help much if you rarely face live pitching. Another solution is scrapping the DH. That's a topic for another day, but we know the players' union will never agree to that one. One move that might help is eliminating the DH in the minor leagues. In general, pitchers are among the better athletes on high school teams, and many current major league hurlers were good hitters in their younger days. Pitchers' offensive skills begin to deteriorate in the minors, where the DH is used exclusively. Letting them get their hacks before they get to the bigs can only help when they arrive. It's clear that interleague play is here to stay, even if the differences between the leagues makes it unfair at times. Grooming pitchers to be more complete players when they're young would help even things out. Through Wednesday, 70 interleague games had been played in National League parks, without the designated hitter. AL pitchers had 24 hits in 151 at-bats in those games, giving them a .150 average that is actually slightly better than the cumulative average of NL pitchers on the season. (Between the interleague and regular schedules there have been a total of 559 games in NL parks.) Pitchers help their causes with bunts more often than hits, however, and NL pitchers have a significant edge in that department:
New York State of MindPlayers usually respond to getting booed in their own parks in one of two ways: By pretending not to hear the criticism or by gamely granting fans the right to voice negative opinions if their guy isn't performing well. Catcher Todd Hundley has heard plenty of catcalls since returning to his hometown to play for the Cubs before the 2001 season. Last year he spent more than a month on the disabled list and hit .187 in 79 games. This season he's hitting .213, and he's become a whipping boy for fans at Wrigley Field. Hundley, a former Dodger and Met, says the booing bothered him last year, but he has since decided not to take it personally. He's also playing mind games with himself to make the negative noise more tolerable. "I played in New York and I played in L.A.," he says, citing two other markets where everyone is fair game for criticism. "When they boo I try to mentally transform myself to being in New York." Sports Illustrated staff writer Stephen Cannella covers the baseball beat for
the magazine. Touching Base appears every week on
CNNSI.com
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