Setup Men

Tattoo Parlor Count big-name pitchers among those getting hammered a lot more than usual this year. Kevin Brown , David Cone and Darryl Kile are all giving up home runs at about twice the rate that they had entering the season. Here are the 10 pitchers who have experienced the biggest drops in innings per home runs allowed (minimum 40 innings pitched).
Pitcher, Team	Career (through '99) Inn per HR	2000 Inn per HR	Decrease
Heathcliff Slocumb , Cards	19.4	5.2	14.2
Ken Hill , Angels	13.3	4.6	8.7
Kevin Brown , Doners	17.4	8.9	8.5
Miguel Batista , Expos-Royals	11.8	3.4	8.4
Darren Dreifort , Dodgers	12.8	5.4	7.4
David Cone , Yankees	12.2	5.3	6.9
Charles Nagy , Indians	9.7	3.6	6.1
Ismael Valdes , cubs	9.9	3.9	6.0
Darryl Kile , cardinals	10.8	5.5	5.3
Sean Bergman, Twins	8.4	3.8	4.6
SOURCE: ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU

If the home run is the punch line that hitters, fans and owners never tire of, pitchers and pitching coaches are the straight men. Giving up dingers is part of the job description these days, and every pitcher is a stooge.

Ten years ago just one pitcher in the big leagues, the Orioles ' David Johnson , gave up 30 home runs; last year 20 pitchers served up at least 30 gopher balls. The Astros ' Jose Lima leads the majors this season with 29 home runs allowed, putting him on track to beat Bert Blyleven 's record of 50, set in 1986. Lima has suffered from his club's move this year from the spacious Astrodome , formerly one of the best pitchers' parks in the majors, to Enron Field, the prototypical New Age bandbox that has come to be dubbed Ten-Run Field. Vern Ruhle , however, has suffered even more from the change of address than Lima has. Ruhle was the Houston pitching coach. He was fired June 23.

"We're like Vietnam veterans, not to demean Vietnam vets, with the bombs going off," says Royals pitching coach Brent Strom, whose club has served up a major league-high 146 gopher balls this year. "Home runs don't shake up the pitchers that much anymore. You get used to them." Ruhle, who spent 13 years in the majors, pitched 68 innings in 1978 and didn't give up a home run. Greg Minton , a former reliever with the Giants, went three years (1979 to '81) without serving up one. As recently as 1992 more than one of every four big league games was homerless (26.2%). The home run was a rare, game-changing event. But pitchers who have entered the majors since the apocalyptic expansion of 1993 have no such sensibility. Now, fewer than one game in 10 does not include a home run (9.3%). "If I were a young pitcher today watching the highlight shows, I might be afraid to throw the ball over the plate," says Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling . "Every night you see nothing but balls getting hit out of the park."

Says Tim Hudson , the second-year starter for the A's who has given up 16 home runs in 18 starts this year after only eight in 21 last year, "I don't like to give up home runs, but in this day and age it's not a big deal. I don't know if pitching's gotten much better in recent years. Everybody knows hitting has, with guys getting bigger and such, so something's got to give. I guess it's your ERA."

Rangers pitching coach Dick Bosman says he constantly reminds his pitchers not to let the barrage of home runs detract from their aggressiveness. "We never want to get to the point where they accept them," Bosman says. "It's a constant mental battle. Get ahead, stay ahead, use your head—that's our motto. The other thing we stress is keeping the ball down. Leave yourself room to miss. That area from mid-thigh to above the belt, as Frank Howard used to say, gives the hitter built-in elevation. You have to stay out of there."

Schilling, who broke into the big leagues in 1988, has surrendered 1.32 home runs per nine innings this year, nearly two thirds higher than his previous career rate. The increase, he says, is due more to changes in hitting philosophy than to his pitching. "The game has changed," Schilling says. "Everybody's hitting home runs. There is no such thing as a two-strike swing anymore. Guys take their rips no matter what. I used to face a bunch of guys like Brett Butler , who'd just put the bat on the ball, especially with two strikes. Those guys don't exist anymore."

"The biggest difference in the past 10 years," Bosman says, "is that when you make a mistake now, guys kill it. Just about every one of them will hit it out. It used to be when you made a mistake, maybe it'd be a hit in the gap or they'd pop it up."

Another American League pitching coach, who asked not to be named, says power hitters have benefited from widespread steroid use, an edge for which pitchers have no counter. Though some pitchers do use steroids, the coach says, they do so more for the recovery from injuries than as a performance enhancer, as hitters do. "Everything's in the hitters' favor now," says the coach. "This is the game [the owners] want. They love it. If I were pitching today, you know what I'd do? I'd cheat. Load it up, scuff it—not all the time, but if I needed a big strikeout. Guys don't do that anymore. They're afraid of getting caught."

In an age when even middle infielders are swinging from the heels, pitchers are the sad-sack foils. Dodgers shortstop Kevin Elster , out of baseball for more than a year, returns and hits three home runs in his fifth game back. Tigers second baseman Damion Easley hits the roof of a restaurant 440 feet from home plate at Tropicana Field .

Bosman remembers one game in 1992, when Camden Yards in Baltimore opened. Yankees slugger Danny Tartabull walloped a home run into the visitors' bullpen in deep left centerfield. "Jaws dropped," Bosman says. This year Bosman was warming up one of his pitchers in the same bullpen during batting practice when Mike Bordick , the 175-pound Orioles shortstop, hit three balls into the pen. No one batted an eye.