Folks think that great pitchers just showed up ten years ago, esp in Cleveland...due to new analytically driven techniques and training...which is hogwash.
The truth is that we don't know if this new pitching revolution is the baseball equivalent to the American Revolution...which changed much of the western world...or is it more like the series of Mexican revolutions that changed nothing.
What we know that pitchers have gotten better, but we have yet to know why. Is it due to increased velocities and spin rates, or is it due to the change in batting, with an emphasis on launch angles, exit velocities, and the abandonment of the two strike approach? Or is it due to highly intelligent defensive shifts?
And what percent of the increase in velocity and spin rates have been due to sticky substances?
Another thing we do know is that elbow injuries have sky rocketed over the last ten years, coinciding with the new wave pitching teachings.
The supporters of New Wave pitching pooh pooh the plethora of medical studies that strongly infer that the pitching revolution has caused the spike in elbow injuries...and cite the very few that disagree. Kinda reminds me of tobacco supported studies that insisted that smoking was not only not a cause of health problems, but actually were beneficial. In any case, there is no way to label the increase of injuries just as New Wave pitching arrived as somehow coincidental.
So what happens to all this great pitching loses its sticky stuff and begins to face batters more intent on making contact? And what happens if shifts are outlawed?
We shall see, but it is unlikely that TJ surgeons are suddenly going to be unemployed.
I believe when the dust settles, New Wave pitching will have improved pitching overall, but only incrementally. But that improvement will not include the pile of elbows it leaves behind.
In re Cleveland and New Wave pitching, the gears were in place for gathering and developing pitchers long before any of us were born. I doubt that there are many franchises that have had more young pitchers develop into truly great ones than Cleveland.
And it was Larry Dolan that on the first day of his ownership declared that the emphasis for the franchise would be pitching development.
Bauer may have speeded up the process, but the Indians were already on there way.