all star gameThe baseball All-Star Game is still the best all-star show in sports. What sets it apart from other sports is its rich history, something about the pageantry of players wearing their regular jerseys rather than a gimmicky league jersey and, most of all, it's the only one in which the players play the same kind of defense they would play in a "real" game. And given the depressed run-scoring environment of today's game, run prevention might be the star of the show tonight. The first half of the baseball season didn't just confirm that 2010 was the Year of the Pitcher. It also raised the idea that we have entered the Era of the Pitcher.
The Major League ERA has dipped below 4.00 for the first time in 20 seasons, shutouts have not been this common since the DH was instituted in 1973, and the strikeout-to-walk rate (2.22) is the greatest in the 118 years since the pitching distance was set at 60 feet, six inches. Many of the biggest stars of baseball are pitchers, such as Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia and Brian Wilson. Perennial hitting stalwarts such as Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki, Joe Mauer, Ryan Howard, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter will not even be playing tonight.
The All-Star Game is the ultimate small sample, so anything is possible, especially with the way the ball jumps at Chase Field in Phoenix. But keep this in mind as you watch a parade of great pitchers take the mound tonight: Neither the NL or AL has scored more than five runs in five straight All-Star Games. If the pattern continues tonight, it will tie the all-time All-Star record of six straight such years, set in the last period of a depressed run-scoring environment, 1986-91. In between the strikeouts, here is what to look f
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