MLB: Why are more batters wearing pitches?

While much of the narrative over the last several years in football has focused on player safety, we got a reminder last week that baseball is still a game that comes with a certain amount of danger, as well.

Miami Marlins MVP candidate Giancarlo Stanton was likely lost for the season when a pitch got away from Milwaukee Brewers’ right-hander Mike Fiers.

The pitch hit Stanton in the face and he was hospitalized with facial fractures, dental damage and a laceration that needed stitches to close.

Jeff Huson spent parts of 12 seasons in the major leagues with seven different teams—the ultimate journeyman. But no one captured the essence of the dangers of baseball than he did when he told ESPN The Magazine’s Tim Kurkjian in 2009:

"“What was the worst thing that Michael Jordan could do to you? He can go dunk on you. He could embarrass you. What’s the worst thing Randy Johnson can do to you? He can kill you.”"

Baseball is almost a century removed from its only on-the-field fatality, when Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman died from injuries sustained when he was hit in the head with a pitch from Carl Mays of the New York Yankees.

But there have been several All-Star level careers that were cut short by pitched baseballs hitting batters in the face. Tony Conigliaro of the Boston Red Sox was an All-Star before he was beaned in 1967. He missed the entire 1968 season and was out of the majors by the time he was 26, save for a brief, unsuccessful comeback with the Red Sox in 1975.

#162378891 / gettyimages.com

Dickie Thon was an All-Star shortstop with the Houston Astros, 25 years old and coming off a career-best season when his face ran into a pitch from Mike Torrez of the New York Mets, ending his 1984 campaign after five games.

Thon came back to play another nine seasons in the bigs, but he never again hit better than .271 in a season.

You hear lots of anecdotes from self-described old-school types about how intimidators such as Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale policed the game with inside fastballs in the 1960s. But the fact is that batters are plunked at a much higher rate today than they ever were during those halcyon days of Gibson and Drysdale.

Here are the five-year rates for hit by pitch totals in the majors over the last 50 years, plus this season’s figures:

Statistics for above graph from baseball-reference.com

As you can see, hit batsmen were significantly lower in the 1970s and 1980s and then began to spike upward in the mid-1990s.

That would be about the same time the home-run boom hit its full stride, so it’s an easy conclusion, right? More home runs equals more hit batsmen.

Not so fast, though. There’s more to it than that.

In the 1970s, the approach to hitting was to use a long, thin bat, stand in the outside to middle of the batter’s box—close enough to the plate to be able to cover the outside pitch, but not so close that you were on top of the dish—and hit the ball where it was pitched.

But the power boom was fueled by more than artificial enhancers. With batters getting bigger and stronger, and thus more able to drive outside pitches out of the park to the opposite field, a change in the approach to hitting evolved.

Batters set up closer to the plate than ever and, emboldened by body armor used by guys such as David Ortiz and Barry Bonds, changed the stride from straight on 40 years ago to a slight closed motion—stepping toward the plate when starting the swing.

That has the effect of what is referred to by commentators of batters “diving out over the plate.”

In Stanton’s case, his first step in loading his swing took him closer to the plate. When Fiers’ pitch darted up and in, he was moving right toward it and could not change his direction in time to get out of the way.

Most hitting instruction today centers on teaching hitters how to remain closed through the swing, such as depicted on this website called TheHittingProject.com.

Most young hitters would balk if instructors told them what “staying closed” really meant. It means, step toward the baseball that is hurtling toward you at a high rate of speed—just step right on into it.

With hitters learning this technique and pitchers being told that they have to pitch to both sides of the plate (and in order to be successful, they must), at some point the twain must meet.

That meeting comes when the pitch hits the batter, resulting most of the time in nothing more than a yelp and perhaps an angry glare toward the guy on the bump.

In the worst-case scenario, the result is an All-Star hitter with a smashed face.

So is the answer to make face pieces such as the one Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves wears mandatory?

Eventually, perhaps, but there are those of us old enough to remember that it took some 15 years to fully implement the single ear-flap batting helmet as mandatory in the major leagues because there was a lot of resistance from players accustomed to wearing the model that did not have ear flaps.

The double ear-flap helmet is mandatory in the minor leagues, but optional in the big leagues … and very few major league players actually use it.

So making face guards mandatory is possible, but it would be at least a decade—probably longer—before they were able to matriculate throughout the sport at the big-league level.

In the meantime, batters will continue to fight through the inescapable truth—in the age-old battle between pitches and faces, pitches are still undefeated.