Tom Verducci's View

	AB	H	RBI	SO	AVG	SLG
Suzuki	423	116	30	45	.274	.371
Ordo�ez	310	90	35	27	.290	.387

CURVING BACK

Phillies righthander Brett Myers, who had thrown at least six innings in all six of his starts and ranked sixth in ERA (2.09) in the National League through Sunday, is apprenticing under staff ace Kevin Millwood. " Myers follows him around like a puppy dog," says assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle. But Myers has something his tutor doesn't have: a knee-buckling curveball, the pitch that is making a comeback among a new generation of pitchers. Myers, 22; the Marlins' Josh Beckett, 22, and Brad Penny, 24; the Cubs' Mark Prior, 22; and the A's Barry Zito, 24, are making the curve cool again. Here's the hook: Baseball's directive to umpires to call more high strikes has encouraged the trend. The strike zone had become "squashed"—wider and lower—through the 1990s as pitchers worked primarily low and away to combat the explosion of power hitting. Dropping a pitch with a vertical break into a horizontal zone was too difficult to encourage frequent use of the big curve.

"Now the big, arching curveball is called a strike," Arbuckle says. "Another reason is we're seeing more young power pitchers. Guys who sink the ball generally throw sliders, and the guys with plus fastballs you see throw the curveballs. That's the classic combination, like a Koufax." Coming soon: more who can bend it like Beckett.

ICING ICHIRO

Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki reached the 2002 All-Star break with a .352 batting average in his first 1,039 major league at bats. Since then he has hit 78 points lower, struck out 33% more frequently and...well, it cannot be put more indelicately than this: He's no Rey Ordo�ez, as these numbers show.

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

In the off-season Suzuki fold new Seattle manager Bob Melvin that he tired at the end of last season, but that wouldn't explain why he was hitting .260 through Sunday. Ever since the Yankees handcuffed him with inside fastballs in the 2001 League Championship Series, more teams have copied that approach. Said one American League scout, "The key is to make him uncomfortable two out of every four or five pitches."

THREE STRIKES FOR...
Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel

Q. Only 13 players have appeared in 2,000 games at shortstop. You have 1,942 [at week's end]. What does that mean to you?

A: I didn't even know that. It's amazing. I take pride every year in trying to be better than I was the year before.