On Tuesday night, the Atlanta Braves faced a pitcher who had never competed above the Class AA level, two rungs below the major leagues. Brad Hand's record against the dreamers and washed-up players who fill the minor leagues was an unremarkable 26-24.
Such tenderfoots often go through harsh initiations from the multimillionaire big-league players and their lethal bats. But the Braves scrounged out one hit against Hand, 21, who struck out six in six innings.
In a fitting snapshot of this run-starved baseball season, the lone hit - a home run - was sufficient for the Braves to steal a 1-0 win from the Florida Marlins.
Those types of games, oddities in recent years, have become almost routine. One Sunday in May, the losing team were held scoreless in six of the 14 games.
Entering the week, the aggregate earned-run average (ERA) in the major leagues was 3.80. (A year ago, when pitchers were putting the whammy on hitters, it was 4.08.) Nineteen years have passed since the pace of footprints being left on home plates was so low.
If 2010 was the Year of the Pitcher, what does that make 2011? The Hangover (For Hitters) Part II? The Year the Pitchers Prove 2010 Was No Fluke? Last season generated enough wind from bats swinging and missing to power a small town, resulting in an unprecedented 34,306 strikeouts. At the current pace, the record will be blown away this season.
Over the winter, a handful of teams engaged in an arms race, trying to stack their rotations with aces.
The Philadelphia Phillies entered the off-season with a rotation to die for, co-starring Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. There was a time, not long ago, when a franchise in their envious situation would have pledged available money to beefing up the hitting line-up.
Instead, Philly shelled out US$120 million (Dh440.8m) for pitcher extraordinaire Cliff Lee to further trim the chances of their staff getting shelled. While this hurlers' version of the old Murderers Row will not clinch a National League East title by the Fourth of July, as some had fretted, the Phils have propped themselves atop the division despite an injury-bitten line-up and bullpen.
Baseball is a trendy sport, and the en vogue model is the San Francisco Giants. Last year, they hit a collective .257, 17th best in the majors. Their earned-run average was a peerless 3.36, a microscopic number made possible by flame-throwing starters Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain and bewhiskered relief pitcher Brian Wilson. San Francisco's World Series trophy offers evidence that the formula can work. Other clubs cite the Giants' model in building their rosters.
The approach is old hat to the Braves, who have preached pitching since Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine - future Hall of Famers all - graced their clubhouse. Direct ancestors Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson and others have collaborated to sculpt a team ERA hovering around 3.00, best by a wide margin in the big leagues.
Atlanta's long-standing philosophy in the amateur draft: Load up on pitching, no matter if there are crying needs at other positions.
Then, if the pipeline from the farm system gets clogged with too many pitching prospects, use them as bargaining chips to trade for veteran position players.
The modus operandi worked magic with 14 straight division titles, ending in 2005. Swimming lately in wild-card waters, the Braves lassoed some reputable batters via trade or free agency in hopes of occasionally playing bash ball.
Rather, the Braves have come to embody, for better and worse, this season of pitchers' paradise and hitters' hell.
While their staff had recorded eight shut-outs, eight one-run gems and nine two-run performances in the first 60 games, the Braves stood barely over .500 in the standings because of their own anaemic hitting.
Five times shut out. Seven games with one run, 11 more with just two.
Across the majors, several accomplished position players have turned impotent. As of midweek, five regulars were hitting south of .200, none worse than Braves second baseman Dan Uggla (.170), who has yet to earn the $62 million contract Atlanta showered on him before the season. Nonetheless, the Braves adhered to their etched-in-stone draft plan early this week, spending 24 of their 50 selections on pitchers.
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It is hardly coincidence that scoreboard operators are able to cat-nap during games ever since the clampdown against performance-enhancing drugs that turned some popgun hitters into sluggers and Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez into muscled (and ultimately disgraced) hitting machines.
Baseball had stuck its ball-capped head in the sand, staying blissfully unaware of steroids and other illicit substances that players (mainly batters) were ingesting. It instituted drug screenings in 2003 but did not get serious about punishment for violators until three years later when, under pressure from the federal government, stricter measures were imposed.
Though the off-season programme is not nearly as thorough as in other sports, with barely more than one in 10 players tested, the fear of getting caught has sunk in. (Not everyone got the message: Manny Ramirez kept abusing even after flunking a test and slinked off into retirement in April after a second positive test that would have triggered a 100-game suspension.)
Hitters' arms and torsos are less ripped. The balls they hit land more often inside the park, or in someone's mitt. At the height of the steroid craze, Bonds hit 73 home runs one season, McGwire 70. Fifty-plus became routine. "Chicks dig the long ball," went the slogan for Major League Baseball, who embraced the home run derby. Well, chicks have been forced to find something else to dig. In the last three seasons, only Jose Bautista of Toronto has eclipsed 50 home runs, and just seven others have hit 40.
The clampdown on steroids may account largely for fewer home runs. More causes have contributed to the run reduction - beyond the circle of life that all sports tend to undergo, with offence and defence alternately holding the upper hand.
Speed kills, it has been said, especially the speeds registered nowadays by ballpark radar guns that once were logged only at auto races. A pitch by Cincinnati's Aroldis Chapman flashed 105 miles per hour (169kph). No longer does a triple-digit reading drop jaws. The mid-90s club is exclusive no more.
A speed-of-light fastball alone is no guarantee to stymie hitters, however, and batters are perplexed by an increased variety and expansion of pitches.
Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees may be a one-pitch wonder. But his trademark "cutter" - a fastball that breaks in the vicinity of home plate - has separated him as the most dominating relief pitcher ever.
With the cutter, Rivera has no equal but newly legitimate impersonators, a trend that has been cited for pitching's mastery this season. David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays hardly needed another weapon, but the cutter has provided him with one. Pitchers are not content to rely on the same set of throws that delivered them to the majors.
Charlie Morton of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a journeyman major-leaguer with an 11-29 record before this season, unveiled a sinker that he has parlayed into a 6-2 record and 2.52 ERA. Quality has been accompanied by quantity.
Some teams' rosters are divided almost evenly between position players (13) and pitchers (12). It is not unheard of for a team to use a half-dozen pitchers in game when only one or two runs are scored.
The other day, Oakland deployed nine pitchers. By the time a batter gets adjusted to one guy's repertoire, he is starting anew against another's. With enlarged pitching staffs, managers can tinker with rotations and summon help from their bullpens for advantageous pitcher-versus-hitter match-ups.
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A few more factors to explain all of those zeroes on the scoreboard:
Ÿ Gold gloves. Just watch the Top 10 Plays highlights nightly for a sense of how many sure-fire hits are being wiped out by vacuum fielders. Spectacular defence, ever so common, imbues pitchers with the confidence to toss more strikes.
Ÿ Pitcher-friendly ballparks. With decreased emphasis on the long ball, stadium designers are less inclined to bring in the fences. Of the four parks opened in the last few seasons, three - Citi Field (New York Mets), Target Field (Minnesota Twins), Nationals Park (Washington Nationals) - are considered kind to pitchers. Then again, maybe they are so labelled because the home team line-ups are hitter-deprived.
Ÿ A call to arms in the amateur draft. The first four selections this week do their work from the mound. Nineteen of 33 draftees in the first round were pitchers.
Fans are not exactly storming the gates to soak in 2011-style baseball, nor are they avoiding games en masse.
Up to June 3, average attendance was 28,243, down one per cent from 28,561 at the same juncture a year ago. The dip could be attributed to unusually inclement weather and the stagnant economy that has taken a bite out of discretionary spending. Still, crowds have declined annually, in tandem with the average runs per game, since a record-smashing 2007.
An old baseball bromide holds that, as the summer brings higher temperatures, batting averages climb in concert. Maybe so. But the night after one lousy hit was all the Braves needed to beat first-time major-leaguer Brad Hand, it was 29 degrees when Atlanta's Derek Lowe carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Marlins.
Florida remained scoreless until the ninth, then bowed 3-2 in extra innings. There is no less secure job in baseball nowadays than hitting coach, and the Marlins fired theirs following the game.