Kyle Karros didn’t get to see that many of his father’s 284 home runs or 1,724 hits in person, but having a dad with that type of Major League Baseball experience is an invaluable resource.
Except when the debating starts.
Eric Karros played 14 seasons in the big leagues, and was the 1992 NL Rookie of the Year. His son is trying to find his way in the majors with the Colorado Rockies, navigating the rigors of his first full season at this level.
Trying to hit a baseball in the majors has been a monumental task for more than 100 years, but it has undoubtably become much harder in the past several seasons. Just don’t try to tell your dad that when he was a Silver Slugger winner back in his day.
“We talk about it a lot,” Kyle Karros said. “I think a lot of my approach has kind of come from him — seeing the ball deep, hitting the ball to right center. We go back and forth all the time, and he makes it sound super easy. Then I come back at him, and I’m like, ‘You weren’t facing 99 miles an hour with sink.’ Sure, we have Trajekt and everything, but I do think it’s definitely more challenging to hit nowadays.
“He’ll go back and forth with me on that; I don’t really acknowledge his side of the argument.”
Pitchers are throwing harder than ever. The ball is moving, in every direction, more than it ever has after it leaves a pitcher’s hand.
The spike in velocity is reaching levels that were unthinkable not that long ago. Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski threw a fastball that registered at 105.5 miles per hour in his last start, which is the hardest recorded by a starting pitcher in league history.
Jacob deGrom won the NL Cy Young in 2017, and his average fastball speed that year was 95.9 mph, according to MLB’s statcast data. Four years later, he was averaging 99.2.
Hitters are not only trying to adjust to faster pitches and more pitchers bringing the heat, but new pitches with names like sweeper, splinker and kick-change designed to further befuddle them.
“I say that to them all the time, like, ‘I don’t know how you guys hit this stuff,'” Rockies hitting coach Brett Pill said. “And thatap coming from an ex-player.”
‘I was like, ‘What is this?”
Pill had 240 at-bats in the majors from 2011-13 with the San Francisco Giants, before spending three years in South Korea playing in the KBO League.
He signed with the Detroit Tigers ahead of the 2017 season, and it didn’t take long at spring training before alarm bells started going off in his head.
“I came back for spring training, and I legit couldn’t see the ball,” Pill said. “I was like, ‘What is this?’ So, it evolved fast. I remember my last year in AAA, a lot of guys were throwing harder and harder.”
The average , one of Eric Karros’ last years in the majors, was 89.0 mph. That average reached 94.4 mph .
When the Pittsburgh Pirates came to Coors Field for Father’s Day weekend, it was a great example of the challenge at hand. The Rockies faced starters Bubba Chandler, reigning Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and Jared Jones.
Skenes is one of the elite pitchers in the sport, with premium velocity, a wide arsenal of pitches that dance, and excellent command. But Chandler and Jones also have electric stuff.
“It’s hard. This game can drive you crazy sometimes,” said Rockies outfielder Jake McCarthy, who had an inside-the-park home run against Skenes that Saturday. “But I just think it’s like, go up and try to swing at the right pitches. Then itap all about your preparation. With me, for example, I’m trying to hit line drives. I’m trying to make an impact on the base paths. I just think there’s a number of different ways you can impact the game, but sure, maybe some parts of it are harder now that pitchers are sort of evolving.”
The numbers say hitting is harder in the 2020s than it has been since 1968, when pitching overwhelmed hitters so much that drastic rule changes were enacted in 1969, including lowering the mound and shrinking the strike zone. Hitters are collectively hitting .243 this season, with a .319 on-base percentage and a .400 slugging percentage. The .243 average would tie the lowest mark since 1968 … with 2022 and 2024.
Those numbers are down significantly from 2000, when hitters slashed .270/.345/.437, and their combined on-base plus slugging (OPS) of .782 was the highest since 1894. There are 11 years in MLB history in which teams averaged more than 8 strikeouts per game — the past 11 seasons.
It’s not just that everyone throws hard. It’s how the ball moves as well. Guys like Skenes and Misiorowski combine the velocity of Nolan Ryan or Kerry Wood with the movement and precision of Greg Maddux. And working the starting pitcher to get to the bullpen doesn’t help as much as it used to.
Bullpens from a generation ago might have had one or two guys who threw in the mid-to-upper 90s. Now teams deploy entire bullpens that can, as pitchers focus more on throwing as hard as possible, with as much movement as possible, because of how usage patterns have changed.
“I think one of the biggest things that has kind of changed in the game is most guys have two fastballs now, sometimes three if they have a cut fastball,” Karros said. “So it’s not as simple as be on the heater, and then adjust to offspeed when there’s pitches that are moving now, still at 100 miles an hour.
“I think it all comes back to just the approach that you’re going up to the plate with. I think gone are the days of just kind of being able to go up there and just swing. I think those days are done.”
‘Itap kind of a daily process’
So, what weapons do the hitters have against these flame-throwing, spin-inducing, precision dart-tossing monsters?
Technology is a huge help. New training regimens help. Improving hand-eye coordination, plus increasing muscle twitchiness, can help as much as, or more than, just getting stronger. Hitters have to swing faster while also making split-second decisions to identify what type of pitch is coming at them and where it’s going.
“There’s multiple ways to train for it, depending on how their body moves and how their bat moves,” Pill said. “How do we get there, and how do we make it as efficient as possible? Then still try to adjust off that for the offspeed stuff. I’m still trying to figure that out, to be honest. Itap kind of a daily process.”
The omnipresence of video and data is a huge boon for hitters. They can watch a video of a pitcher they’re about to face in a matter of seconds. They have access to loads of data as well.
A big game-changer for the Rockies and many other teams is Trajekt, which has taken batting-cage hitting to a new level. Part pitching machine, part simulator, Rockies hitters can actually see the pitcher and his windup on the screen before the ball spits out at them, replicating said hurler’s stuff.
McCarthy said he had faced Skenes several times before June 20, but wanted to get some extra swings on his sweeper just before the game started. The night before, Braxton Fulford came off the bench for a game-winning pinch-hit single off Mason Montgomery, a left-handed reliever who averages 98.1 mph on his fastball. Fulford said he had been in the cage for two innings, getting ready for that specific matchup.
“If we didn’t have video nowadays, phew, I don’t know,” Rockies outfielder Tyler Freeman said. “We’d have to figure something out. Video is super important, not only for watching how the pitchers attack, but also for yourself to see mechanically what’s going right, what’s going wrong. You can find something in your swing a little bit quicker than not having video. So I think it’s super important.”
Beyond pregame preparation, there is also the work in the offseason.
Freeman mentioned hitting foam balls because they allow for more spin and movement. He’s tried rubbing pine tar on regular baseballs to get them to sweep and dive more.
Multiple Rockies hitters said moving the pitching machine closer helps speed up the decision-making process. Karros hits with his father in the offseason, and his dad will move the machine around to give his son more of a challenge.
“I think anyone, after seeing a pitch 30 times in a row, is probably going to start to barrel it, but I have to have him keep me honest,” Karros said. “Every once in a while that nasty slider is going to be in the dirt, so I can’t just be in swing mode. I think that’s kind of one of my favorite things to do in the offseason, is to practice hitting nasty stuff, but also practice like seeing it and make sure it’s in my zone to swing at.”
The final piece of the puzzle is the chess match in the batter’s box. Young hitters can increase their bat speed, get familiar with what the pitcher is going to throw at them, and even have a good idea of tendencies.
There can also be some comfort in familiarity because everyone throws hard now, and everyone has nasty breaking pitches. Facing a guy like Ryan or Wood would be an anomaly for those hitters, but Chandler, Skenes and Jones on back-to-back-to-back days is just the new normal.
But, before the hitters get too comfortable and think they have this Rubik’s Cube figured out … the pitchers and catchers have access to video and data on all the hitters as well.
“Itap funny, but as complicated as it gets, I just try to get more and more simple,” McCarthy said. “If it looks good over the heart of the plate, take a swing at it. It can change with counts and situations, but yeah, the game is hard.
“They’re all good. And then the next series (was) the Red Sox, and itap not going to be like, ‘Oh, it will be easy now.’ They’re all good. Itap just a grind every day, but you also have to accept that sort of enjoy it.”
