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Counsell: Pitching ‘velocity has changed game’
- Updated: May 19, 2016
MILWAUKEE — Why are the Brewers taking so many called third strikes?
It’s the pitching, manager Craig Counsell argued on Thursday.
“I think we’re in an age of baseball where the velocity of pitchers has changed the game,” Counsell said. “I’ll never forget Robin Yount — and this was 10 years ago — saying, ‘If guys threw this hard when I played, I might have been in trouble.’ He said that as a coach.
“Velocity has changed the game. We want baseball to stay the same and never change, but the game doesn’t stay the same. It changes. We’re in a place right now that walks are up, strikeouts are up, velocity is up. It’s harder to put the ball in play.”
All of those things are true of the 2016 Brewers. Entering Thursday’s series finale against the Cubs, they had swung at the fewest pitches (41.9 percent) in the Major Leagues. That held true on pitches both outside the strike zone (23 percent) and inside the strike zone (61.8 percent).
The results of that newfound patience were mixed. The Brewers were tied for eighth of 30 teams with a .331 on-base percentage, but they ranked 18th with a .245 …
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