But this word of caution: We can't be totally sure if those numbers are accurate. They might tell us more about how we measure velocity now than about the pitchers we're measuring. So we went about this another way: We asked scouting directors what they see when they show up at high school and college games.

"When I first started doing this 25 years ago, if you saw a kid touch 90 (mph) at 17 years old, you were like, 'Oh my God,'" says the Indians' vice president of scouting operations, John Mirabelli. "That guy became an automatic prospect. Now, just about every guy (on a scouting director's radar) throws 90, and most of them throw 92. And you never saw amateur guys throwing in the upper 90s. Now you see it all the time. It's unbelievable."

Other scouting directors spun the same tales, over and over. And that tells us something: This is NOT a mirage.

So where is that velocity coming from? The theories go like this:

1. More long-tossing to build up arm strength.

2. More and more kids seeking out personal pitching coaches, most of whom once played professional baseball, who are passing along advancements in throwing programs and better mechanics.

3. An explosion in the use of personal trainers, even by teenagers.

4. Less abuse of young arms by coaches, thanks to new rules, pitch counts and workload limits.

And then there's this: Kids are now obsessed with velocity, because it's all we ever seem to talk about: How hard Justin Verlander throws. How hard Aroldis Chapman heaves it. How fast EVERY pitch in a big league game travels. It's right there, in the corner of every flat screen in America -- and anywhere else kids look, for that matter.

"It's fun to throw hard," says Eddie Bane, a Tigers scout who spent seven years as the Angels' scouting director. "Every minor league ballpark you go to has a radar gun. If you throw hard, it's a statement. It's the one thing no one can take away from you -- how hard the gun says you throw. Kids read about that stuff, and they grow up wanting to throw hard."

Well, whatever it is that's going on, it's going on everywhere from Yankee Stadium to high school fields in North Dakota. And the bottom line is this: It's a big, big reason it's now harder to hit than ever.

Cutters, splitters and gyroballs

But there's another fascinating trend at work among men who pitch for a living: They throw their fastballs harder than ever ... but they also throw their fastballs less than ever.

Or less than at any other time since Inside Edge began recording this data, anyway.

In 2005, major league pitchers threw fastballs 63.8 percent of the time. But by this year, only 61.4 percent of all pitches thrown were fastballs. And don't be fooled by a drop of "just" 2.4 percent. That's a big difference. It comes out to more than 6,000 fewer fastballs that hitters now see over the course of a season. Yep, SIX THOUSAND.

So no wonder hitters think that pitchers are throwing more different pitches than ever. Those pitchers now have 6,000 more opportunities a year to mix in every off-speed pitch in their repertoire.

"It used to be," says Phillies catcher Brian Schneider, "that you'd say, `What's this guy (throw)?' And it would be like, 'fastball-curveball, fastball-slider, fastball-change.' Now you see cutters all over the place. You see the two-seam comebacker. It might be inside to a lefty and back-door to a righty. So you've got pitchers throwing cutters to both sides of the plate, throwing splits to both sides. It just seems like everyone you face has all these pitches. It never used to be like that."

In 2011, Justin Verlander became the first starting pitcher since Roger Clemens in 1986 to win the MVP award. Mark Cunningham/MLB/Getty Images

There isn't enough data that goes back more than a couple of years to prove that, in fact, pitchers do throw more different pitches than they used to. But we do know this: They utilize the tools they have in their tool box in more innovative ways than at any other time in many people's memories.

"I just think pitchers are equipped more," says the pitching coach for Schneider's own staff in Philadelphia, Rich Dubee. "They do different stuff with the pitches they have ... I think it's because the strike zone shrunk. You didn't have the high strike. You didn't have the width (off the corners) of the plate. And I think because of that ... guys became more creative."

So pitchers now throw their changeups to right-handed and left-handed hitters, instead of just one side or the other. They throw a potpourri of breaking balls to every quadrant of the strike zone. They've gotten "more educated," says Marlins catcher John Buck, "about how they hold the baseball and what that grip can make the baseball do."

And the upshot is, the hitter has less and less idea of what's coming. In any count. No matter who's on the mound. Every pitcher on a staff now features an almost unprecedented variety of ways to go at them -- "from the front of your staff," says Buck, "to the back of your staff."

There appears to be a definite rise in sidearming bullpen specialists -- both left-handed and, in the last couple of years, right-handed. That's a species Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan calls "the cross-fire guys -- the guys who step here (exaggerated step toward foul line) and then throw over here (steps back and fires sidearm across his body)." Never fun to hit against.

Use of the sweeping, swing-and-miss curveball is also way up -- from 8.0 percent in 2005 to 9.8 percent this year. And Inside Edge has verified a definite upswing in the pitch that hitters complain about most -- the cutter. Just since 2009, when Inside Edge started tracking cut fastballs, they've increased from 2.8 percent of all pitches thrown to 3.8 percent. That means more than 10,000 cutters are now being delivered every year.

"It seems like everybody throws a cutter now," says the Dodgers' Adam Kennedy. "And the pitchers who can (throw) that same pitch, off the same plane (as their fastball), they're the ones that can really excel with that. It's very hard to read when it comes out of the hand. And the more pitches that come out of the hand at the same plane that do different things, obviously, that's where it gets really difficult."

Information, please

Incredibly, we haven't even touched on the most revolutionary change in the sport over the last few years. It isn't testing. It isn't the cutter. It isn't even that technological gift from the heavens that lets us watch live baseball games on our phones. Nope, it's something way more powerful than all of that.

It's the Information Age. And it's wreaking havoc with the lives, the batting averages and the psyches of hitters everywhere.

We've already written a detailed look at the explosion of information in modern baseball and how it's changed the game. So if you want to bask in the full panorama of that phenomenon, click here. But we can sum it up this way:

The hitters are doomed.

Why? Because before they even step into the batter's box, the pitcher they're facing, the catcher calling pitches and the opposing coaches have sifted through the onslaught of information and know EVERYTHING about them:

Exactly where their holes are ... exactly which pitches they swing and miss at ... exactly where they tend to hit the ball ... and exactly how to make their lives miserable.