Finally, pitchers have regained control of the game

Quietly, baseball has brought itself back into balance over the last two years. Largely because of a bigger strike zone, pitching is back. If Barry Bonds, with his 73 home runs, was the symbol of 2001, then Curt Schilling with his 18-3 record, and more than a dozen starts still to come, is the symbol for 2002.

The trend toward equilibrium began last year, particularly in the American League, and it's strengthened this season, especially in the National League. As a result, the sport's come back from the brink of a ludicrous, almost comic, excess of offense. It's amazing what reducing runs by one-seventh can do for sanity.

Baseball entered this season with three large structural problems confronting it: restoring economic balance among franchises, improving the sluggish pace of play, and reducing the number of 13-11, nine-home-run games.

While almost no one even noticed, baseball cured one of its most serious problems. The game still has major labor issues, as the next few weeks will no doubt illustrate. But few of its headaches are on the field. A sport that was in danger of becoming hideously lopsided, with scores that looked like softball games, has tinkered with rules, taken away some protective armor from hitters, and gotten back to something approximating "normal."

Here's one eye-catching statistic that captures the whole trend. In 2000, only one starting pitcher in the entire American League had an ERA under 3.70 (Pedro Martinez). Right now, there are 15 starters in the AL and 22 in the NL.

This season, when we talk about historic performers, we'll focus on starting pitchers. Who's more amazing, Schilling, who already has 212 strikeouts along with his 18 wins, or teammate Randy Johnson, 14-4 with 200 strikeouts? Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine actually rank first and third, respectively, in the league in ERA. That's no surprise. Two years ago, no NL team had an ERA under 4.00. This year, the Braves staff is at 2.95.

Forget that chicks love the long ball. Who's the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award: one of two Red Sox pitchers, Derek Lowe (14-5, 2.23) or Martinez (13-2, 2.50), or the A's Barry Zito, who is 15-3 at age 24 and could be emerging as a superstar. Mike Mussina (13-4) might finally have a 20-win season.

Hitters haven't disappeared, but they've sure taken a step backward. Maybe it took umpires and pitchers two years to get comfortable with the idea of pitches above the belt being called strikes, as the rulebook stipulates. Certainly more pitchers now understand the value of a "high hard one."

Also, hitters are slightly less prone to stand on top of the plate, taking away the outside corner, now that they are not allowed to wear the enormous armor of recent years. They can still get some protection, but not to the point where a 95-mph fastball on the elbow doesn't hurt. Less has proved to be more.

Perhaps you've even noticed that umpires now seem to allow pitchers to work inside--and even hit a batter--without issuing a warning. The unwritten code at the moment is that if one team drills a hitter and the other team retaliates with one hit batter, it's not the end of the world as long as the pitches are below the neck.

Tempers can flare, as they did in Sunday's Orioles-Red Sox mini-brawl, which was ignited by tit-for-tat fastballs in the back. But that was an accepted staple of the game for decades. As long as headhunting is verboten, pitchers should continue to be given leeway to work inside with gusto, even if hitters don't like it.

And they don't. With good reason. At the moment, only one player is on a pace to hit 50 homers. Forget the days of 70 homers. We may wait a generation, or forever, to see a player who hits more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth did, yet isn't even the home run champ. Someday far in the future, a trivia question may be: What player hit 63, 64 and 66 home runs, but didn't win the home run crown in any of those years? And people won't believe that such a fate could have befallen Sammy Sosa.

Right now, only one player in the National League is on pace for more than 121 RBI. And only two hitters in each league are batting over .333. Why, this could be 1935, 1946, 1958, 1977 or dozens of other sensible seasons when the sport had statistics and league leaders that made sense in a long-term historical context.

Is it possible something has gone spectacularly right for poor battered baseball? Apparently, it has. Right now, the sport is in a perfectly satisfactory balance between pitching and hitting, with an enjoyable, but modest bias toward offense. The American League is probably still a little too hit happy. But not enough to complain.

Thomas Boswell is a columnist for The Washington Post.