With another Indians win today, the subject of how much the team strikes out was raised again on Paul Hoynes’s blog.
This has long been a point of contention for me. It’s been asserted in the past, and again today by Hoynesie, that the Indians front office doesn’t care about strikeouts. They don’t think high strikeout players are a bad thing.
I’ve long believed that this doesn’t make any sense.
Taking into consideration some of the things we’ve discussed on this blog in the past, putting the bat on the ball is - obviously - integral to getting hits, and simply hitting the ball at all is often enough to reach base, since what happens after the ball leaves the bat is contingent on a bunch of things that no one control. Unless it’s a home run, in other words, it’s all about luck.
It follows then that if you’re a hitter, it’s really important to connect with the pitch, even if you do so poorly, because once you do anything can happen.
Strikeouts inherently run counter to this principle.
Moneyball talks a lot about the chance phenomenom but really only from the perspective of the pitcher. I think it’s important to remember that this affects hitters as well.
In fact, using this logic, you could argue that the difference between a good hitter and a bad one is three elements: propensity to walk, ability to hit home runs, and not strikeout.
Still, this would ignore situational hitting, which is often the first thing that’s ignored when discussing baseball from a statistical perspective, or really most sports, because stats are most applicable when considering large sample sizes.
For example, research may prove that you have the best shot to score the most runs by NOT bunting and giving up an out to move to the runner to second, but when it’s a tie game in the 8th inning and you’ll take what you can get, the conversation has to switch to different percentages - which play gives you the best chance to score a single run?
Of course, with a runner on first and no outs there are a lot of different permutations for how that man could score, but even for a great OBP guy, there’s about a 60% chance that he’s going to make an out. Really, the best way to make a decision on how to score a single run is to go through a complex analysis of percentages for the next three specific hitters and weigh whether or not the bunt should go down.
With a runner on first base and no outs, a strikeout is bad - but it’s not worse than a fly ball to right field that the guy can’t tag up on and it’s definitely not worse than a double play ball…but with one out and a runner on third it’s far worse than that same fly ball to right field since that sacrifice fly could drive in a run - which, after all, is the name of the game. Scoring runs.
The Indians may have some statistical analysis that illustrates a hitter’s strikeout ratio doesn’t have a large overall effect on the game because those times when he strikes out with a runner on third and no outs balance out with those times he strikes out with a runner on first and one out instead of hitting into an inning-ending double play. I don’t know.
But let’s also consider that putting the ball in play also gives the defense an opportunity to make an error. At the same time, one good thing about striking out is that at least it makes the pitcher throw a minimum of three pitches, as getting pitch counts up on starting pitchers particularly is a good thing, since bullpen pitchers are generally speaking not as good at pitching as starters. That’s why they’re in the pen.
I’m sure there are other factors - do players who strikeout a lot make up for it by hitting more home runs? Can a player compensate for strikeouts with plenty of walks? The Indians are also the best team in baseball at getting hit by pitches - they lead the American League with 65 HBP, 18 more than the Boston Red Sox. Percentage wise that’s a small number, considering the team has 4356 plate appearances so far this season, but it does help a little bit.
Ultimately, there are a ton of variables to consider when attempting to determine the value of a strikeout, maybe too many for me to come to any truly distinctive point of view. It is an out - not a good thing - but how much worse of an out it is than any other is obviously a deeper question. Having said that, I have a hard time accepting that a team that did not strikeout wouldn’t have a higher OBP since just connecting with the ball at all gives you at least some chance to get a hit - so it’s really the residual effects of strikeouts that we’re talking about.
I can also say that this season strikeouts don’t seem to have a drastic effect on wins since the league leaders in strikeouts goes like this:
Texas - 874
Tampa - 866
Cleveland - 836
Boston - 771
Detroit - 745
Four of those five teams are in the playoff race. The Yankees, on the other hand, are third best in strikeouts with 673, and they’re in first place. But the top two teams, the Blue Jays and the Orioles respectively are not exactly lighting it up.
Wins don’t have a direct correlation with offensive production, of course, since pitching and defense do play a large role in winning games as well. But when we look at runs scored, there doesn’t seem to be a huge correlation either - the Yankees and the Angels have scored the most runs at 614, but Tampa (580), the Indians (564), and the Red Sox (560), are right below them, three of which are high strikeout teams.
You can look at all of the AL stats here but, in my eyes there does not appear to be any definitive connection between strikeouts and runs scored…
Baseball Prospectus, which has done a lot more research than me, has this to say. I have not yet read the article, so if it says I’m an idiot…well, so be it.
Meanwhile, how many more games do you think the Indians would have won since the trades if they hadn’t given up Victor and Cliff? Ha.
12 wins in their last 18 games…not bad. More evidence that making the deals was the right thing to do.
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