Seattle pitchers need Charlton’s aggressiveness to rub off on them

SEATTLE — Maybe Norm Charlton was joking.

On the other hand, he probably wasn’t.

The new Seattle Mariners bullpen coach related the story Thursday of playing Little League baseball. A girl, apparently after considerable coaxing from her mother, joined a team and found herself at the plate, gripping a bat, against Charlton, a future 13-year Major Leaguer.

“I faced her for the first time and I hit her,” Charlton said. “She quit after that.”

It didn’t stop there. He was a proud, card-carrying member of the “Nasty Boys,” the Cincinnati Reds relief corps that merrily intimidated its way to a 1990 World Series title. Now, Charlton is trying to bring similar aggressiveness to the M’s, with new pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre’s unconditional support.

Having spent four seasons as special-assignment pitching coach in the M’s organization, Charlton is well aware of the struggles the staff went through in 2007. The starters couldn’t get through enough innings, which put pressure on a young relief staff that led to an exhaustion-related collapse in September.

The answer, Charlton says: Few M’s hurlers pitched inside, staking claim to the inside half of the plate. They were either too nice or afraid.

Which, Charlton said, has to stop.

“Getting the ball in there works on everybody,” Charlton said.

Fewer and fewer pitchers come into the minors or majors mindful of the value of pitching inside, M’s director of scouting Bob Fontaine said, because of the aluminum bat used in college and high school.

“Guys don’t try it because a pitch inside with an aluminum bat is a double down the third-base line,” Fontaine said. “Instead, they try to throw breaking balls outside. They might have been able to get away with that before, but it doesn’t work up here. You have to pitch inside.”

Charlton and Rob Dibble got most of the credit for giving hitters an occasional aria of “chin music,” or an inside fastball close enough to the victim to virtually spin his cap.

On the way, they hit more than their share of batters and started more than a few brawls, but they also established the fact that they weren’t afraid to make a hitter back away from the plate and, ultimately, give themselves the outside corner.

Dibble, especially, got a well-deserved reputation as a headhunter. But Charlton may have been the brains of the operation.

“Everything Rob Dibble did, it was Norm Charlton’s ideas,” M’s manager John McLaren said, grinning.

The M’s passivity on the mound, Charlton believes, was a big part of their struggles last season. Many times, Charlton says, Felix Hernandez threw 100 pitches in the first four innings because he tried to nibble on the outside corner — and miss, adding to his pitch count — instead of firing an inside fastball.

Hernandez pitched inside when he was first called up to the majors. He has largely abandoned it since, Charlton said.

“Why? I don’t know,” Charlton said. “It bewilders me. I don’t know if he lost confidence and was afraid to use his fastball. I don’t know. Those are things we’re going to have to find out in spring training.”

Understand, Charlton doesn’t want games to turn into bloodbaths. He wants two things: develop the ability to throw inside for strikes; and throw off the plate inside to push the hitter off the plate.

“You can take it to another level and include intimidation if you’d like, where you’re actually throwing at the guy and knock him on his tail to let him know that you own both sides of the plate,” Charlton said. “But the main part of it is to have the ability to throw inside for strikes and inside for effect. If you can’t do both of those, throwing inside to all the good hitters is worthless.”

The M’s lack of aggression is alien to what Charlton always believed in and practiced as one of baseball’s best and most feared relievers. It is that same philosophy that he believes will boost the level of effectiveness of the 2008 staff.

“For whatever reason, I don’t think we pitched inside enough last year,” he said. “That’s the way you pitch in the big leagues and that’s the way you win. If you watch (Josh) Beckett pitch, he ran the ball inside. When he got in trouble, he ran the ball inside. That’s my philosophy. That’s Mel’s philosophy.”

If Charlton has his way, it soon will be the Mariners’ philosophy as well.

Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. For Sleeper[`]s blog, “Dangling Participles,” go to www.heraldnet.com/anglingparticiples.