Hitting a baseball has always been among the hardest tasks in the world of sports, and the way Jose Canseco sees it things aren’t getting any easier.
Canseco spent 17 years in the major leagues, but he didn’t face the depth of power arms hitters see today.
“Back when I played there were max a handful of pitchers in the league who could touch 100,” he says. “Today you’ve got triple that.”
Reliable velocity data doesn’t exist for Canseco’s years in the big leagues, but since it appeared in 2002 the average fastball has gone from 89.0 mph to 91.9. When he debuted, the average position player struck out 13.5 per cent of the time, now that number sits 20.6 per cent.
It’s not a coincidence.
“It’s getting so much harder for hitters,” Canseco says. “If you look at the top 10 starters in the league they’re all throwing 95, and [the fastball] isn’t even their main pitch.”
Velocity alone isn’t enough to overwhelm big-league hitters, but the off-speed pitches have evolved along with the fastballs.
“Watching the guys and the break on the ball always breaks the plane and never goes straight through the zone,” Canseco says. “That’s when you become incredibly hard to hit.”
It’s the combination that makes the six-time all-star glad that he played when he did.
“I used to face Randy Johnson and one time he threw me one at 103 and it gets on you so fast it’s crazy,” he recalls. “I can’t imagine a guy throwing 100 with four different pitches.”
Is there any pitcher today that Canseco has in mind that he’d never want to face?
“Yeah, all of them.”
Canseco believes that as tough as things are now they are only going to get worse for anyone looking to hit baseballs for a living.
“I think eventually you’re going to get the 108 mph thrower, maybe 110, through the evolution of baseball and human evolution,” he says.”They’re going to find ways to stretch out ligaments in an arm or accelerate quick-twitch muscle fibres.
“You never know, there could be some genetically-modified human being.”
