LAKELAND, FL - FEBRUARY 15: Tarik Skubal #87 and Matthew Boyd #48 of the Detroit Tigers run together across the field during Spring Training workouts at the TigerTown Facility on February 15, 2020 in Lakeland, Florida. (Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
If there is one thing I appreciate about baseball, it’s how you can identify the winds of change based on numbers. For example, let’s go back to 1971 and look at the Detroit Tigers’ starting rotation.
This is three seasons after the “Year of the Pitcher” in 1968 in which the mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 to give the batters a fighting chance.