Armed and Dominant: Year of the Pitcher

All this week, the FanHouse staff will look back at the most significant baseball storylines of 2010.

In China, 2010 was the Year of the Tiger.

In Major League Baseball, it was the Year of the Pitcher.

Finally.

After nearly 20 years of an offensive boom, hurlers took back the game in 2010. The Giants won the World Series with great starters and a rag-tag lineup. There were two perfect games, one near-perfecto and four other no-hitters, including the second-ever in the postseason.

We should have known it was coming when the defensive play of the year came on Opening Day -- and it, too, was by a pitcher.

It wasn't just anecdotal. The numbers back up the trend -- we hope it's not a one-year aberration -- that offense was down.

Teams averaged 4.38 runs per game in the regular season, the lowest total since 1992 (4.12). There were 0.95 home runs per team per game, the first time that average was fewer than 1.0 since 1993. The MLB-wide batting average (.257), on-base percentage (.325) and slugging percentage (.403) were the lowest since 1992, '92 and '93, respectively.

Pitchers averaged 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings, most ever (thank you, Mark Reynolds and your ex-Diamondbacks teammates!).

By the way, we can't blame just the awful Mariners (3.17 runs per game) for the offensive decline. The other 29 teams averaged 4.43 runs per game, which would still be the fewest for the majors as a whole since 1992.

So the next question is, why?

Is it steroids testing? Maybe a little. But pitchers were juicing too, and testing has been in place for a while. And there are still substances like HGH and who-knows-what designer drugs for which MLB doesn't test.

Maybe it's just that we are riding a wave of great pitching, with more standout pitchers in or about to enter their prime than there have been in a while.

Of the 32 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title and had an adjusted ERA at least 15 percent better than the league average, according to baseball-reference.com, 22 were age 27 or younger. That's 68.8 percent of the majors' top pitchers aged 27 or younger, the highest percentage since 1934.

That list includes Tim Lincecum, Clay Buchholz, Josh Johnson, Felix Hernandez, Ubaldo Jimenez, David Price, Jaime Garcia, Jon Lester, Jered Weaver, Clayton Kershaw, Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, Justin Verlander, Tommy Hanson and Mat Latos.

As far as the specific accomplishments, it was Mark Buehrle with the between-the-legs, no-look flip on Opening Day; Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay with the perfect games; Armando Galarraga with the near-miss; Matt Garza, Edwin Jackson and Jimenez with the no-hitters; and Halladay with the postseason no-no.

Then there were the Giants. In the clinching Game 5 of the World Series, they started a lineup with Cody Ross hitting fourth, Juan Uribe fifth and Pat Burrell as the designated hitter.

"Good pitching stops hitting," Rangers manager Ron Washington said after the loss, "and in this series their pitching certainly stood up, and that was the difference right there."

All season long, too.