Minnesota Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson listens to starting pitcher Kevin Correia before the Minnesota Twins played the Baltimore Orioles in their
Minnesota Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson listens to starting pitcher Kevin Correia before the Minnesota Twins played the Baltimore Orioles in their first spring training game Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Fla. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The phrase "pitch to contact" has been deleted from the Twins' lexicon. It is gone forever.

Like Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark in official Soviet Union portraits, it has been expunged. All traces have been removed and no one is allowed to speak of it. As far as anyone is concerned, the phrase, like the birthmark, has dissipated into thin air.

"I'm never saying it again," Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson said. "I've taken enough crap for it."

Anderson gets hot when the subject comes up because, he says, it's all a misunderstanding. What he thinks the phrase means and what the rest of us think it means apparently are two different things.

Nevertheless it was something Twins fans always spat out like a bad bite of potato. "Pitch to contact" was right up there with "stadium subsidy," "milfoil infestation" and "Bubonic Plague." And how many times did we roll our eyes after yet another home run allowed by last year's lousy rotation and say: "Nice pitching to contact?"

"It does NOT mean, here, hit this ball," Anderson said emphatically.

But that's what it looked like.

"It's about attacking the strike zone," Anderson explained. "It means don't go out and start picking and trying to be too fine. Then you'll wind up pitching behind in the count. And if you pitch behind in the count, you'll get your ass kicked. It's about trusting your stuff."

The situation was further complicated in 2012 because the vast majority of the starting pitchers had no stuff.


Every pitch toward home plate needed to be immediately followed by a Hail Mary. So, yes, people started to take that phrase the wrong way. The phrase apparently is supposed to mean "don't nibble." Instead, it came to symbolize everything wrong with the team over the past two seasons.

"Yeah, that's what people got out of it," Anderson agreed. "Me? I caught a lot of crap for it. But basically, if Alex Meyer is throwing 95 miles per hour -- attack! Don't pick. Even if you're throwing 83, just attack and pitch ahead in the count.

"From now on I'm going to say, 'just throw the #*&%^$ ball' instead."

That I understand.

But in truth, the Twins organization got carried away with the term, too. They noted that they drafted fellows who pitched to contact, traded for guys who pitched to contact and described prospects as youngsters able to pitch to contact.

To the rest of us, that sounded like an awful lot of contact. And from what we saw at Target Field, contact was a very bad thing. If the ball didn't clang off the wall, it would be bobbled by a fielder. That's why I had been insisting they should try "pitching to no contact."

"Think about that," Anderson said. "Pitching to no contact would be ball one and ball two. Throw it over. Throw it over. How many times have you heard that?"

This is getting tricky. So not pitching to contact means not throwing a strike ... I think.

"The definition of pitch to contact? Man, I guess throwing quality strikes in the strike zone and trying to induce contact," closer Glen Perkins said. "Weakly. Pitch to weak contact."

Weak contact ...

"I think it's trying to get the right-handed hitters to ground out to short and the lefty hitters to ground out to second base," Perkins said. "If you get groundballs, that's OK contact."

So if we break it down, the phrase meant -- past tense because it's dead now -- to throw quality pitches in the contact zone. Don't nibble and don't try to be too cute.

"Watch (Kevin) Correia, he'll attack the zone with 88, 89 (mph pitches), but he knows what he's doing," Anderson said. "(Mike) Pelfrey might attack the zone with 91, 92."

Anderson shook his head. He knew the phrase had to go when a couple of his close friends in baseball asked him, "Exactly what does pitch to contact mean?"

"I got ticked off at that," Anderson said. "It just means attack. Don't pick."

Anyway, it's gone. It joins the ranks of other defunct baseball phrases such as "knockdown pitch" and "Sunday doubleheader." I won't miss it.

A few hours before the Twins' game Monday, Anderson threw a round of batting practice. As usual, baseballs flew everywhere as Anderson, like all batting practice pitchers, just grooved it in there. Upon completion, he walked over to where I was sitting.

"Now that's pitching to contact," he said with a laugh.

Tom Powers can be reached at tpowers@pioneerpress.com.