Strike Zone Standard

Glavine, Peterson explained, had made his living inducing batters to swing at pitches off the plate because umpires were calling those pitches strikes.

"If you're getting five, six inches off the plate, no hitter in baseball could cover that," Peterson said. "There was no need to pitch to both sides of the plate." But a few years ago, Major League Baseball installed QuesTec, a computerized system of tracking balls and strikes. Those wide strikes disappeared, and with them went Glavine's dominance.