Why is pitchers mound higher

Active Oldest Votes. First a little bit of history.. How the pitcher's mound was born? But this was not always true: During different periods in baseball history, the mound has been much taller.

According to baseball historian Bill Deane: the idea for a mound was claimed by an s pitcher, John Montgomery Ward. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Dor Cohen Dor Cohen 7, 7 7 gold badges 41 41 silver badges 72 72 bronze badges. How much trial and error is enough? I agree fans would rather see home runs and action, but I'm also sure fans would appreciate meticulous pitching.

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What letter in the word Wilmington is the same number in the word counting from the beginning as it is in the alphabet? Are business terms exclusively for commercial transactions? We do not have complete batted-ball data for the s, but we do have records of ground outs and air outs, which have been shown to do a decent job of estimating groundball rates. This could lead one to believe lowering the mound had almost no effect on ground balls and rather may have even increased them.

It turns out that the idea of throwing downhill to induce ground balls is more myth than fact. As a side note, if a five-inch change in mound height has no significant effect on groundball rates, then it goes to reason that any slight mechanical adjustments a pitcher makes to increase the height of his release point will have no effect on his groundball rate. An important note is that I am counting double plays as only one out, so the increase in double play opportunities in would not artificially inflate the number of ground outs.

Batters obviously were hitting balls harder than they had in the past, leading to more home runs and more hits on balls in play. Why were batters suddenly squaring up pitches more easily than they had done in the past? The lowered pitching mound could be one of the contributing factors. While throwing on less of a downhill plane may not have drastically changed groundball rates, it very well could have affected the quality of contact.

Denny McLain thought the lower mound would strain pitchers more, making it more difficult for them to pitch innings. Some pitchers complained of their arms getting sore in spring training, thinking the lower mound might be the cause. The smaller strike zone likely contributed to at least some of these increases.

The effects of the strike zone extend beyond walks and strikeouts. Imagine the strike zone is enormous and almost any pitch gets called for a strike.

The batter will have to swing at pitches nowhere near home plate, and if they make contact, it will most likely be feeble. Now, when a strike zone shrinks, the opposite should happen, as the batter no longer needs to swing at pitches he only can hit weakly. Additionally, a smaller strike zone means pitchers who fall behind the count are forced to throw more hittable pitches.

In , batters had a. Once again, we cannot measure how many more favorable counts arose because of the new smaller strike zone, so we will have to resort to looking at the changes seen when the strike zone first was increased in size. So while it seems very plausible a decreased strike zone should increase home runs, the increase seen in looks to be caused by more than just a zone change.

But this is just anecdotal evidence. I looked at the home run graph again and saw was a bit of an outlier in terms of home runs allowed, low even compared to Another possible effect was the change in ballpark dimensions. In an effort to increase hitting, several teams moved outfield fences closer to home plate, and the Dodgers notably moved their home plate closer to the fence. Another stadium change was the switch to synthetic turf in some stadiums. The new turf was supposed to let ground balls move faster, making them more likely to go for a hit.

The BABIP for turf is much higher than for grass, but while the number of games played on turf increased in , the actual percentage of games played on turf went down slightly. One other interesting note: if changes in the height of the pitching mound had an effect, it would be greatest on the Dodgers, who were famous for having the tallest pitching mound in So while part of this could be from the Dodgers having to lower their pitching mound more than any other team, they did see most of the new scoring coming from home runs, which was due partly to their closer fences.

What role could the mound change have? While the change in the pitching mound coincided with a large change in the offensive environment, it is clear that it did not cause all of the change.

There were so many modifications made to baseball in that we have too many confounding variables to definitely say what were the actual effects of the mound change. This change did have an effect, but it is much smaller than we might have guessed. Much of the change in run scoring can be attributed to other changes in the game.

The increase in walks was not caused by a change to the pitching mound, but was caused almost entirely by the strike zone change. The decrease in strikeouts is right in line with what we would expect from the change in the strike zone. The only remaining area where the mound change could have had a significant impact is on home runs, but the home run increase is not entirely a result of the mound change, as at least some of it was caused by the diminished strike zone, changing park dimensions and other factors.

He, like all other pitchers of the day, pitched from a box using a run-up. The box was level with the field, 4-feet wide and 6-feet long.

The front of the box was a mere 50 feet from the plate. The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.

What gives? What gives is that in there were two strike zones—upper and lower. On taking his turn at bat, a batter would inform the umpire there was only one per game then, which also led to some interesting baseball rules which zone to call, and the umpire would duly inform the pitcher.