re: How did the Pitching dramatically improve so quickly?

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The SEC zone went away and for the most part the wind blew in.

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This.

SEC zone was very tight, once the hitters learned it, it became impossible to blow it past a guy unless you're Skenes level of good. You either give up meatballs, or you miss the plate, walk guys, and end up throwing meatballs with the bases full.

Combine this with a lot of newer parks, where things have been laid out to accentuate the offense (excite the fans and draw them in), and we saw a lot of guys get beat up bad.

Come to Omaha when the wind is blowing in, and with a looser strike zone, you get some calls that force the batters to swing at things they can't crush. And even when they do connect, if they put some loft under it, it's held inside the park. People whined about that, we saw what happens when it's blowing out. Popups sail over the fence. Contact hitters (like Morgan) and line drive hitters (like Skenes, etc) weren't really affected by that, especially since they were already good hitters to begin with (and White too, he can go down and get some nasty pitches).

As an aside, this is why I'm not so in favor of electronic strike zones. You eliminate any random change of zone that an umpire might have, technically every batter should be able to learn exactly what his zone is. It's the same no matter the park, no matter the pitcher. There are very few guys like Skenes that can straight overpower hitters, you'd start to see guys really tee off. That SEC zone might not be as 'tight' as we thought, it might be what is actually there.