TAMPA, Fla. – Welcome, everyone, to "Mr. Glavine Meets the New Strike Zone," Chapter One.
Our story opens on Monday afternoon at Legends Field, home of the world champion New York Yankees. Our protagonist, Mr. Tom Glavine, is making his first start of spring training.
|  | | If the new strike zone forces Tom Glavine to change his way of pitching, he says it won't be easy on his part. |
In spring training of any year, this would be a fun March day at the yard. Braves against Yankees. Glavine against Orlando Hernandez as the starting pitchers. And Kevin Millwood-Mike Mussina to follow in relief. Sure beats those "B" games in Haines City.
But on this day, the whole world is watching extra closely. On this day, we are watching to see if Glavine and the new strike zone can co-exist in peace, love and harmony.
Everywhere we go this spring, we hear the same message: This new zone, expanded north and south but shrunken back to rule-book width east and west, is really going to hurt the Braves in general – and Glavine and his pal, Greg Maddux, in particular.
"Hey, I'm flattered," Glavine says, laughing. "We're the only two guys in baseball who can pitch down and away, I guess."
But in reality, Glavine is mildly offended at this talk – and he should be – because it almost implies that he practically had to cheat to rack up those 208 wins, those two Cy Young trophies and those five 20-win seasons. And it implies he had to conspire with the umpires to do it, too.
"You hear people say Greg and I get that pitch six inches off the plate," Glavine says. "Well, believe me, if we got that pitch six inches off the plate, we'd give up a lot less runs.
"But at the same time, certain pitchers do get the benefit of some of these calls, just like certain hitters do. You can't tell me that Cal Ripken or Tony Gwynn or Wade Boggs have had the same strike zone as a Rafael Furcal or a Wes Helms or anybody else who is just coming up. There's no way they do."
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I made the mistake two years ago of anticipating how they were calling strikes, and things got all out of whack. Mechanically, I was so messed up, I didn't know where the ball was going. So this year, I'm just going to do my best to do it the way I've always done it. ” |
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— Tom Glavine |
Now, though, the umpires are being told that the strike zone is going to be the same for everybody. And the umpires have duly passed that message along to the players this spring.
It sounds like such a basic concept. But if we could pick one word to describe the universal reaction to all this, it would be this:
Confusion.
The hitters think it will help the pitchers. The pitchers think it will help the hitters. And if you're neither of the above, who the heck knows what to think.
Told that the hitters seemed particularly confused this spring, Glavine chuckles: "Join the club."
"I say that not as a knock on anybody," he says. "But a lot of us have been in the game a long time, and we're used to doing things a certain way, and it's not going to be easy to change.
"I don't think any of us know how this is going to play out. There's a lot of patience being shown now. But we all think that in the back of guys' minds, there are going to be a lot of arguments and a lot of problems once the season starts."
On this day, the home-plate ump is a young guy named Andy Fletcher. Glavine works two innings, throws 29 pitches. Only 16 of them are strikes. But if not for a hit-me, down-the-middle fastball that Alfonso Soriano smokes into the jetstream for an RBI double, this would be regarded as a sensational spring debut.
The ball-strike calls on the corners don't look much different to him than they ever did. And as for those above-the-belt strikes, "I'm not going to throw too many pitches up there on purpose anyway," Glavine says.
"Guys like Curt Schilling and Pedro (Martinez) and Randy Johnson can make mistakes up there and get away with them," he says. "But those guys are different. Most of us were taught to keep the ball down, and you won't see many pitchers change that mindset. And I'm one of them."
Glavine's line for his first start: 2 innings, 2 hits, 1 run, 1 walk. Two days earlier, Maddux had spun two perfect innings against Tampa Bay.
That's a combined 2.25 ERA. So if that's how the National League's two winningest pitchers are going to be hurt, then they'll be happy to take that kind of punishment every single start.
"When people want to get critical, I don't know why they're always pointed out," says pitching coach Leo Mazzone. "But everywhere you go, it's Maddux and Glavine, Maddux and Glavine. You know, you're talking about two pitchers with a chance to go to the Hall of Fame.
"They've always been awarded the borderline strike. But they've earned that. You've got pitchers who earn certain areas of the strike zone, because they've got great control. It's that simple."
And in many ways, it is. The strike zone, as it has come to exist these last 10 years or so, didn't evolve as some conspiracy to help the Braves. It's evolved because this is the way the baseball earth has spun.
"The pitchers were told to keep the ball down," Glavine says. "The hitters were told: 'Don't swing at the ball above the belt.' And the umpires were told: 'Don't call that pitch a strike.' "
So now they're being told different. Let's see how easy it is to reprogram all those brainwaves in one month.
"You could go around and ask every player on every club what's going to happen," Glavine says. "And nobody knows. And the umpires don't know. Oh, I give them a lot of credit. They're trying seriously to do this. ... But short of sticking a square block behind the plate, every guy is going to see things differently.
"Up to now, some guys were pitchers' umpires, and some were hitters' umpires. And I don't see how that's going to change. Maybe overall, there's going to be a more aggressive attempt to call strikes. But you're not going to see every umpire calling the game the same. It's not going to happen. It's impossible."
And if the spirit of this strike-zone crusade is to get umpires to call more strikes, does it make any sense to think the team it will hurt most is the team that, for years, has thrown the most strikes?
"I don't mind people pointing fingers at us at all," Glavine says, "as long as they're not going to make an extra effort to take away the corners just for us. If I throw a ball on the corner, I want it to be called a strike just like everyone else. If everyone else on the corner gets a strike and I've got to be on the outside third of the plate, then I'm going to be upset.
"The reality is that pitchers get in a groove with the umpire. If they continually put a pitch in the same spot, pitch after pitch after pitch, they expect to get a strike. I never understood why a guy who's all over the place and then throws one ball on the black gets upset because he doesn't get that call. You have to earn that call."
So for those looking for the panic in Glavine's face this spring have a long wait. His philosophy on how to deal with this new zone: Don't change a thing.
Which is exactly the opposite of how he approached the previous effort to reshape the strike zone, two years ago.
A dozen starts into that season, he was 3-7 with a 5.00 ERA. He had to go 11-4 after that just to get back to 14 wins. He admits now it was all because he was psyched out by the strike zone.
"I made the mistake two years ago of anticipating how they were calling strikes, and things got all out of whack," he says. "Mechanically, I was so messed up, I didn't know where the ball was going.
"So this year, I'm just going to do my best to do it the way I've always done it. If it means I have to pitch behind a little more or if it means I have to make adjustments, so be it. But last time I tried to make the adjustments before I had to, and I got myself in trouble."
The spring will unfold for four more weeks. Glavine and Maddux will be out there five more times apiece. They will see that microscope over their heads. But in a climate in which hitters will be hacking at more pitches than ever, it would be more shocking if they don't find a way to exploit that than if they're the ones who wind up exploited.
"I think Greg Maddux will take advantage," says GM John Schuerholz. "And I think Tom Glavine is one of the toughest, most competitive pitchers I've ever known. So you could make a strike zone shaped like a triangle, and with both these guys, it wouldn't matter. I'm willing to bet they'll find a way to be successful."
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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