Lau and the Revolutions

Today's New York Daily News pays tribute to Charley Lau, probably the most influential hitting coach in baseball history.

As the article points out, hitters like Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez can trace their swings to the Lau influence.

In the early 1970's, Lau went to work for the Kansas City Royals and transformed the swing of a young third baseman. George Brett went on to a Hall of Fame career.

"All these guys that are being successful now, and all that success that's bringing them fame and fortune, don't know that they should attribute it, in a very large part, to Charley," St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa told the paper. "To me, the two most significant men of the last 40 years I've been in uniform are Marvin Miller and Charley Lau, in that their actions caused revolutionary changes in the game."

Which got me thinking -- if Miller and Lau are the "two most significant men of the last 40 years" what other people and trends have most influenced the game over the past few decades? I came up with a list of six -- one person and five other issues.

1. Curt Flood. He challenged baseball's reserve clause, which said a team owned a player for life, after being traded from the Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood lost the case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court but the reserve clause was eventually overturned a few years later. Today's free-agent millionaires can thank Flood for paving the way.

2. The pitching staff revolution. The whole concept of a pitching rotation didn't really take hold until around 1960. Five-man rotations took hold in the 1970's -- about the same time the use of the "fireman" became popular. Today's fireman are now called closers. Starters are relegated to strict pitch counts and middle relief roles are populated with people called LOOGYs (left-handed one out guys).

3. The sabremetric revolution. Billy Beane and "Moneyball" made it popular but guys like Bill James were challenging baseball's traditions with sophisticated analysis long before then. James now works for the Boston Red Sox and just about every team in baseball employs a stats guru. Today's statistics are rooted in fundamental economic marginal analysis. The question isn't whether a player is good or bad but how much better is he than the alternative? Terms like VORP and WARP are built around the idea of opportunity cost.

4. The media revolution. Forty years ago, few baseball games were televised and the ones that were shown were delivered on free over-the-air stations. Today, almost every game is shown and you're probably paying for it. Cable, satellite and the Internet are the new distribution vehicles. Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) is the Internet subsidiary of Major League Baseball and by some estimates, already worth in the billions of dollars.

5. Performance-enhancing drugs. Watch a baseball game on ESPN Classic from the 70's or 80's and the first thing you notice is the size of the athletes. Everyone looks much smaller. Certainly, weightlifting and nutrition have played a role here. Million-dollar free-agent contracts meant players could focus on the game year round. Weight-lifting, once almost verboten in baseball, is now standard. And starting in the late 1980's, steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs became a part of the routine for many players. The issue, and the players, continued to grow throughout the 1990's. Today's game is played under the cloud of a steroids investigation and a landmark home run record is under assault and under suspicion. Baseball will be wrestling with this issue for years to come.

6. The lowering of the mound. After the 1968 season, which saw Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson set a single-season ERA record of 1.12, baseball decided to lower the mound to give a boost to the offense. The mound lowering of five inches, the introduction of the designated hitter, cozier new ballparks, a shrinking strike zone and issue number 5 are all reasons why offense has spiked. But tinkering with the mound also produced an unintended consequence. I heard Tim McCarver give an interview to XM radio recently where he said, in his opinion, the decrease in the slope of the mound has resulted in far greater arm injuries to pitchers. McCarver wants to see the mound raised.

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Here's to the Future

The Futures Game kicks off the All-Star Game festivities today in San Francisco. Cardinals prospects Bryan Anderson and Colby Rasmus, both currently at Double-A Springfield, will play for the American team. The game will be televised on EPSN2.

In a couple of years, both those guys could be regulars in the Cardinals lineup (and they're not the only ones). Tune in and check them out.

Update: Both went 0-2.