With Steroid Era Over in the MLB, Did Pitchers Get Off Easy?

MLB Players (both retired and current) maintain that pitchers are now pitching inside with more frequency, and umpires are calling inside strikes more often.

Whether it be through the aid of the umps’ wider strike zone, a paucity of PEDs coarsing through hitters’ veins, or simply better pitching, it’s nice to see pitchers regain a dominance we haven’t seen in 10-15 years since Pedro Martinez was in his prime. 

No more ridiculous 70+ HR seasons on the horizon, even though “chicks dig the longball.”

Even the new Yankee (bandbox) Stadium has leveled off after prodigious scoring in its inaugural season.

As some of you know, I have traditionally been more of a fan of smallball (perhaps because I grew up on the smallball-oriented West Coast), so it’s nice to see pitchers have a fighting chance. 

On that note, anyone notice how pitchers have, for the most part, dodged the culpability of the steroid era?

Even though we have a few scapegoats like Eric Gagne and Roger Clemens (who endured the most public scorn for lying through his teeth about his PED use on 60 Minutes in 2008), we’d much rather wag our fingers at the Cansecos, McGwires, and Bonds of the world for tainting the sport.

There may not have been as many pitchers as hitters listed on the Mitchell Report, but I counted at least 21 hurlers, many still active MLB players (Ryan Franklin, Andy Pettitte (pictured), Brendan Donnelly, to name but a few), who have eluded the  same indignation as the hitters listed on the report.

Why haven’t pitchers been raked over the coals like the batters had for the past several years for PED use? 

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