Jays Centre: are strikeouts really that bad?

[Brock Beauchamp]

I thought this was a good read on how strikeouts are overblown by fans. They have their downsides compared to other outs but some of that downside is mitigated by the removal of an opportunity for multiple outs from a plate appearance.

The Blue Jays and the Unloved Strikeout - Blue Jays - Jays Centre

JAYSCENTRE.COM

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Many baseball writers see high strikeout rates as a major negative. But is a strikeout that much worse than another kind of out?

 

[Frisbee Slider]

@Brock Beauchamp How many team sites are you up to now?

[jay87shot]

Not all strikeouts are the same, sure a strikeout with a man on 1st is actually better than a ground out. In turn however, a strikeout with 1 out and a man on third is way way worse than a fly out or ground out. On top of that by not hitting the ball you don't have errors, bloopers, or dinky infield singles those are things that lead to crooked numbers. I get that at times strikouts aren't the end of the world but I will take a guy who strikes out less 8 or 9 times out of 10 times.

[endaround]

Are we here again? The type of out by major league hitters does not really matter.  A .350 OBP player who makes all their outs via strikeouts is more productive than a .330 OBP player who always put the ball in play.

Strike out rates matter for minor league players because it may signal that they can't handle major league pitching.

[Frisbee Slider]

10 minutes ago, endaround said:

A .350 OBP player who makes all their outs via strikeouts is more productive than a .330 OBP player who always put the ball in play.

That can’t be universally true, though? If the .350 OBP strands every runner on third and the .330 OBP person drives them in? I also suppose it depends on whether the higher OBP results in runs scored.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

@Brock Beauchamp How many team sites are you up to now?

Five!

[wiguy94]

2 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Five!

[nate82]

1 hour ago, Frisbee Slider said:

That can’t be universally true, though? If the .350 OBP strands every runner on third and the .330 OBP person drives them in? I also suppose it depends on whether the higher OBP results in runs scored.

It would be universally true as you are taking the majority of the outcomes and averaging them out.  If you are talking about one off situations then there really isn't an answer other than the one that confirms the bias.  A higher OBP is always going to return with a higher runs scored than a lower OBP.  You  can't score if you don't get on base.  The .330 OBP player may get one or two more runs scored a season but on average that .350 OBP player is going to drive in more runs.

Ask yourself this with 1 out and a man on 3B would you rather have Alec Bohm (.332) or Rafael Devers (.354) with 1 out and a man on 3B?

 

1 hour ago, endaround said:

Are we here again? The type of out by major league hitters does not really matter.  A .350 OBP player who makes all their outs via strikeouts is more productive than a .330 OBP player who always put the ball in play.

Strike out rates matter for minor league players because it may signal that they can't handle major league pitching.

At some point the K rate matters as we normally don't see players being all that successful with a K rate above 30%.

[endaround]

13 minutes ago, nate82 said:

It would be universally true as you are taking the majority of the outcomes and averaging them out.  If you are talking about one off situations then there really isn't an answer other than the one that confirms the bias.  A higher OBP is always going to return with a higher runs scored than a lower OBP.  You  can't score if you don't get on base.  The .330 OBP player may get one or two more runs scored a season but on average that .350 OBP player is going to drive in more runs.

Ask yourself this with 1 out and a man on 3B would you rather have Alec Bohm (.332) or Rafael Devers (.354) with 1 out and a man on 3B?

 

At some point the K rate matters as we normally don't see players being all that successful with a K rate above 30%.

Right there is a limit for projecting future performance but if we are comparing the impact of past performance strikeouts are just not that important compared to other stats.

Now let's say you have a center fielder who has a career 34.2% K rate and a career BABIP of .389, you might have concerns if he can maintain that level going forward. So you can easily see why projections systems all project a season below his career numbers.

[Frisbee Slider]

41 minutes ago, nate82 said:

The .330 OBP player may get one or two more runs scored a season but on average that .350 OBP player is going to drive in more runs.

If 100% of the .350 OBP person’s outs recorded are strikeouts, I’m not sure that is true. Especially if it lacks slugging percentage. It is such an extreme hypothetical mentioned in the above post.

The high OBP only matters if the batters behind him don’t strikeout all the time and also get on base. 

Putting the ball in play does matter. I think the difference between .330 OBP and .350 OBP is one or two extra times on base per month.

 

[Lathund]

11 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

If 100% of the .350 OBP person’s outs recorded are strikeouts, I’m not sure that is true. Especially if it lacks slugging percentage. It is such an extreme hypothetical mentioned in the above post.

The high OBP only matters if the batters behind him don’t strikeout all the time and also get on base. 

Putting the ball in play does matter. I think the difference between .330 OBP and .350 OBP is one or two extra times on base per month.

 

The benefit of "productive outs" is more or less cancelled out by how very bad double plays are. 

 

Moving on to the topic in general: When looking at strikeouts it also matters *why* someone strikes out, or why they don't. Swinging harder, trying to pull the ball, and trying to put it in the air will generally result in more swing and miss. If you successfully do those things, then you'd happily take the extra strikeouts in exchange for the home runs. Hitting the ball hard and swinging and missing kind of go hand in hand after all. Strikeouts become far more problematic in someone who doesn't hit the ball hard, as there is no tradeoff. Strikeouts are sometimes also the result of plate discipline and being selective. And they also go hand in hand with walks. If you don't lay off pitches, you're not getting walks either. Joey Gallo is perhaps the most extreme version of the profile of combining selectiveness with swinging hard. Extreme walk rate, extreme strikeout rate, lots of HRs. 

So far, I'm just stating the obvious. I think what's interesting is the opposite of this, where we get the Dee Gordon, Juan Pierre, Willians Astudillos, Luis Arraez types of this world. As in miniscule walk rates and strikeout rates, high batting average but no power. Players relying on their great bat control and bat to ball skills to make contact with anything. They are an example of where they'd probably benefit from striking out more. Not because strikeouts are better than other outs, but because of what happens when they don't. Their walk rate is low because they swing on pitches they shouldn't, both early in the count and with full counts. And fairly often putting the ball in play is *not* better than taking a ball. Depending on the location, pitch movement and the count (And the base-out states), it's sometimes not even better than taking a strike. 

The last part probably sounds unintuitive or just wrong. But think of it how the average BABIP was .291 in 2024. So putting the ball in play, there is a .291 chance of a hit, .015 chance of reaching on an error, .019 chance of a double play, .007 chance of a sac fly, and some chance of an RBI groundout or productive groundout that I don't have the means to calculate here. 

Anyway, point is that something like 2/3 of the time, the outcome is the same as a strikeout. Sometimes the outs are less bad, sometimes worse. The 1/3 that are hits or errors though are good, and the argument would be that putting the ball in play as often as possible maximizes the chances of that. But we can also see the result of putting pitches in various parts of the zone into play. And the pitches around the edge of the zone (Both inside and outside, i.e the pitches that Gallo lays off and that Astudillo or Arraez put into play) have a very low batting average, and almost zero chance of an XBH. And of course also no chance of a walk/HBP. 

The calculus is different at 0-2 compared to 3-0 or 0-0, but the point is that putting the ball in play excludes the other outcomes of a plate appearance. If the best you can hope for is a single, and the chances of even that are low, you're sometimes better off taking a strike. 

The other aspect of being in the "make contact with everything" approach also comes at the pitches you *should* be swinging at. If the swing is too heavily geared towards always making contact, that tends to mean either a lower bat speed, sitting back as opposed to trying to get in front of it, and a flatter bat path. That tends to mean that a player like that will rarely swing and miss at a middle-middle pitch, but they will also punish them with an XBH less often. A Joey Gallo will whiff on some, but will also put more in the seats. 

 

Anyway, this was long. Just trying to contrast the obvious downsides of strikeouts with the less obvious ones of not striking out. Not really an argument in favor of either direction, just that there is a balance to be had. Strikeouts aren't really worse than other outs, but they should be a consequence of doing some other things well. And too many is still not good. Likewise, not striking out at all has some real drawbacks as well, that aren't as obvious. TL; DR of this TL;DR: Swing really hard at pitches you can do damage on if you make contact, lay off pitches you can't do anything with, even if some might be strikes.. Easy, I solved baseball. 

[Underachiever]

Just tell me if I am allowed to to complain about a strikeout with nobody out and a runner on third. 

I think that the majority of complaints about ks, especially during game threads, are situational. When discussing individual players we talk about strikeout percentage, but situations like the one I mentioned above are still bad to get a strikeout.

We are entering the "did you hear about the statistician who drowned in a lake that averaged 3 feet deep" territory.

[Frisbee Slider]

40 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

Just tell me if I am allowed to to complain about a strikeout with nobody out and a runner on third. 

You are allowed to complain that large market teams have the resources to overcome strikeouts but small market teams do not.