OK, so that's still a lot of fastballs. But remember, a decline of 2-3 percent represents many, many pitches, just in those counts, over the course of a season. And even this data, says Inside Edge's Kenny Kendrena, is slightly misleading because it includes "cutters" as fastballs, since Inside Edge only recently began classifying cut fastballs as a separate pitch type. So the actual percentage of true fastballs is far lower.

"You even get to a 3-and-2 count now, sometimes it's a crap shoot," Howard says. "You don't know what's coming."

Well, if Howard in particular has that feeling, the data shows us exactly why: He sees fewer fastballs in "fastball counts" (55.0 percent) than any hitter in either league. And that percent has been plummeting precipitously, from 77.8 when he first reached the big leagues in September 2004 to 64.7 percent in his rookie of the year season in 2005, to the 50s shortly thereafter. Some fun.

But if off-speed misery loves company, Howard should know he has plenty of it. Inside Edge tells us eight hitters have seen fewer than 60 percent fastballs in "fastball counts" this year, among hitters with at least 100 pitches in those counts:

Three guys on that list -- Fielder, Kemp and Ortiz -- have seen a major fluctuation in how they're approached just since last year. Fielder was seeing 65.1 percent fastballs in those spots last season. Kemp was getting 66.5 percent. Ortiz was at 68.9.

Welcome to the wonderful world of technology. As soon as the data shows that feeding those men fastballs in those spots can be hazardous to ERAs, the league adjusts -- immediately. So when people start talking about the Age of the Pitcher, no wonder the first thing many hitters think is: There's no such thing as a "fastball count" anymore.

"Guys who have control are throwing those [off-speed] pitches for strikes in just about whatever count they want to throw it," Howard says. "So I think that definitely plays a huge part in it."

HITTING THE SHIFT KEY

In the beginning, Joe Maddon had his magic markers, and he had his charts. And that's how he helped the Angels position defenses back in the "olden" days, when he was still a bench coach in Anaheim.

Of course, those "olden" days were, like, a decade ago. Yep, a decade. But in retrospect, the info back then looks like ancient stone-tablet etchings compared with what he's using these days to devise defenses so innovative they'd make John McGraw's brain explode.

"When we first began, it was very primitive," Maddon says. "All it really was, defensively, was a bunch of lines … where you kept track of where hitters hit the ball against you in the past, against your pitchers."

The amazing thing was that in those days, even aligning defenses like that felt practically scientific. But nowadays, there's not much difference between the way most baseball teams set defenses and the way Dick Lebeau does it in the Steelers' war room.

A screenshot from Baseball Info Solutions' Defensive

Positioning software shows where David Ortiz

hits ground balls and short line drives. Baseball Info Solutions

Thanks to companies like Baseball Info Solutions, all 30 teams know exactly where every hitter in baseball tends to hit the ball. So when you look out at the field and see third basemen practically playing up the middle, shortstops on the other side of second base and second basemen set up on the outfield grass, 75 feet beyond the infield dirt, that's not guesswork, ladies and gentlemen.

That's The Information Age at work in modern baseball.

"Everybody wants to be aggressive," Maddon says. "They want aggressive pitchers. And they want aggressive offense. And they want aggressive baserunning. I want aggressive defense. I mean, if there's any kind of football tenet that I want to draw, I want us to be aggressive on defense, too, and force some issues there. And at the end of the day, when I talk to our guys, we preach: Catch line drives.

"Now who are the better hitters? The better hitters are the guys who hit the ball hard. So if they hit the ball hard, you need to be closer to the spot where they hit the ball hard most often. And if they happen to mishit it, we're athletic enough to go catch it. So that's what this is all about -- trying to get to the spot where the better hitters hit the ball hard most often."

It's no surprise, then, that according to Baseball Info Solutions no team in baseball has applied more unorthodox shifts than the Rays. But they're not alone. Over in the National League, the Brewers have begun shifting on a handful of right-handed hitters. In a related development, their new manager, Ron Roenicke, spent years coaching with Maddon in Anaheim.

"Joe and I used to talk about this a lot when we coached together," Roenicke says, "about how we're putting fielders in places where some guys never hit the ball. So it's about putting fielders in other places. There are times you're going to get burned. But if you look at it over the course of the year, how many hits you might save, that's what you consider before you do it."

A screenshot from Baseball Info Solutions' Defensive

Positioning software shows where Ryan Howard

hits ground balls and short line drives. Baseball Info Solutions

Hang on, though. There's more to this than that. The data on the computer, and the video that goes with it, have gotten so precise that teams also know now which pitch is most likely to get a hitter to hit a ball to a certain spot. Here's how easy that is:

"You look at the spray chart on the computer screen and draw a square with your mouse on that area [of the field] you want to see," says Brian Jones. "And whatever balls went through that square, I can see what types of pitchers those were. ... It's like a virtual video spray chart. So your infielders and your pitchers, everyone's in sync."

Now imagine being a hitter, marching up there in a critical spot. He isn't just dealing with special defenses aligned only for him. He's also coping with pitch selection designed to work specifically with those defenses. It's incredible anybody ever gets a hit.

"It's like if you're playing football and you're playing Army," Jones says. "You're not going to run five defensive backs out there if they're going to run the option on you all game. It's similar to that. Why am I going to put four safeties on the left side if there are only going to be two receivers? The answer is: You don't."

AN APPLE A DAY

In the beginning, there were tapes. Big, clunky VHS tapes that had to be loaded into bigger, clunkier VCRs. And that's how players watched video once upon a time.

Eventually, a few of the more advanced teams started editing those tapes to produce custom DVDs for a few technologically savvy players. And as the years rolled along, more and more players started lugging around laptops so they could crank up that video from airplane seats and hotel rooms.

Then came the iPod, an invention that made it possible for players to watch every episode of "Lost" and every pitch against the Blue Jays with just about the same ease. But the screens were smaller than Joe West's strike zone. And loading that video onto each iPod presented major, time-consuming technological challenges. So even the iPod had its limits.

So for years now, teams have been using video in some form or other. But it was just 16 months ago -- drum roll, please -- that life in the video room, as we used to know it, changed forever.

Players have loads of information at their fingertips these days, like these heat maps from TruMedia. ESPN.com

All because of the iPad.

"Now," the Mets' Jason Isringhausen says, "guys are carrying all the information in the palm of their hand. It used to be on tapes this big."

He spreads his hands about 3 feet apart. And we both know those tapes weren't that big (although the VCRs were). But you get the idea.

Thanks to the iPad, "you don't ever see guys reading magazines anymore," Brian Jones says. "It's more guys on their iPads. It's become part of the baseball uniform almost."

When you look around a baseball clubhouse these days, everybody is fiddling with an iPad. We'll never know for sure how many of them are breaking down video and how many of them are playing Angry Birds. But the iPad hasn't just given them all a new toy. It's also a symbol -- of the mindset of the modern player.

"The game has gotten younger," Jones says. "So the pitchers now grew up with more technology in their life. Before, guys didn't know how to use it that much. And you've still got coaches who can't even check their email without help.

"Now we've got 22-year-old kids who have barely even known a life without iPods. They probably barely even know what a CD is. So their adaptation to technology, and not being scared of it, has allowed them to use this information more freely and easily."

At the same time, the technological revolution has brought us apps and innovations that make it possible to load astounding amounts of video onto one iPad, link it to massive quantities of useful data, sort it a trillion different ways and allow these guys to find just about anything they need -- with one tap of their iPad screen.

So Derek Lowe tells a story about visiting the weight room on a trip to Colorado -- and finding Troy Tulowitzki watching video on his iPad while he was working out.

Phillies catcher Brian Schneider tells a tale about leaning back in bed the night before he catches, making a quick run-through of the next day's lineup and letting his brain sift through it all overnight.

Joe Maddon reports he wakes up every morning, heads for Starbucks, opens his iPad, finds an email packed with everything he needs to know to reinvent that night's strategizing and starts plotting out his game plan between sips of tea.

"It's just come so far," Jones says. "Back when we were [loading video] on the iPod, we'd say, 'Man, it would be nice if this was just a little bigger.' ... Now the iPad has just kind of changed everything. We don't have to have these guys come into our video room, to look at the computers. The iPad is with them wherever they go. You see guys in the elevator at the hotel, and they're carrying nothing but their iPads. It's kind of become the new wallet."

TIME TO BURN "THE BOOK"

In the beginning, we're pretty sure there was still information. It just got absorbed and passed along pretty much the same way the cave men did it: Via eyeballs. And mouths. How could that possibly have gotten anybody anywhere?

"When I first started," Lowe says, "it was kind of your own eyes. You had to talk more to the guy who pitched before you or the catcher, or try to use that type of knowledge. I think you had to watch the game more. Now, it's just endless. And sometimes, there's so much [information] available now that if you don't use it wisely, I think it can become a negative."

Here's Barry Zito watching videotape in the A's clubhouse way back in 2004. Michael Zagaris/Getty Images

Well, he's right about that -- to a point. If you don't know what you're looking for, or you don't pay attention, The Information Age can't possibly work for you, except by accident.

But in the big picture, all those skeptics who think the effect of all this information on the modern game is overblown needs to seriously adjust their rabbit ears.

If used intelligently, this is info that works. Period.

If you put enough fielders in spots in which hitters most often hit the ball, more balls get caught. And if you throw enough quality pitches, in unpredictable sequences, in places where those same hitters have the least success, fewer balls get hit hard.

So mull this over again. If used intelligently, is there any argument that the way this info is being applied "can become a negative?"

Let's go back to Ryan Howard. Five years ago, he batted .313 AVG/.425 OBP/.656 SLG, for a 1.084 OPS. But as the data has flooded in -- showing which pitches he hits, which pitches he scuffles against and where he repeatedly hits the ball -- what has happened?

He now sees fewer fastballs than any hitter in the game. He also sees fewer fastballs in "fastball counts" than any hitter in the game. And only a half-dozen players in the sport are forced to hit against as many shifts as he sees.

So what effect has all that had on him? His current numbers: .251/.341/.481, with an .822 OPS. That in itself tells a big part of the story. But there's more. His batting average on ground balls and short line drives over the last two years is just .197 against The Shift, but .278 when he sees no shift. And one year, when the Phillies kept track for a whole season, they computed that he lost 35 to 40 legitimate hits because of The Shift.

So what's the evidence this information doesn't work again?