The greatest starting pitchers had at least one Unfair pitch, maybe two. Some great pitchers, like Whitey Ford and Spahn, never had an Unfair pitch but an assortment of excellent pitches instead. The game has changed a lot since those days. But, as one pitching coach has said, “the game never changes to help pitchers.” That’s why today’s pitchers have been forced to evolve from predators to jackals. “Pitchers today don’t out-stuff hitters,” Buck Showalter, the Baltimore Orioles manager, says. Pitchers today are con men, pickpockets, masters of deception. Their weapons are small pitches: cutters, splitters, circle changeups.
No team in baseball today has a greater number of successful deceptive pitchers than the Philadelphia Phillies. They have brought together four of the best starting pitchers in the game: Roy (Doc) Halladay, a 33-year-old two–time Cy Young Award winner; Cliff Lee, 32, and also a Cy Young winner; Roy Oswalt, 33, with 150 career wins; and the 27-year-old Cole Hamels, a World Series hero three years ago. Before they have even thrown one pitch for the same team, they are being hailed as the best four-man rotation in baseball, maybe the best ever. They are being compared with the great staffs in baseball history: the New York Yankees in the 1930s; the Cleveland Indians in 1954; the Orioles with their four 20-game winners in 1971; and the Atlanta Braves in the 1990s. As soon as Lee rejoined the team last December, the Phillies immediately became everyone’s favorite to win this year’s World Series.
Entire story in today’s NYTimes