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?

 

[thelanges5]

Strikeouts are boring. Strikeouts looking are infuriating. When the ball is put in play, there’s a chance that something great could happen. 27 outs in a game and when 1/2 or more come via K the defense doesn’t have to do anything. 
 

That said, good article and I agree that the outcome of a strike out and any other out is the same.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

54 minutes ago, thelanges5 said:

Strikeouts are boring. Strikeouts looking are infuriating. When the ball is put in play, there’s a chance that something great could happen. 27 outs in a game and when 1/2 or more come via K the defense doesn’t have to do anything. 
 

That said, good article and I agree that the outcome of a strike out and any other out is the same.

Agreed, fantastic article and agree with the thrust, in terms of a team evaluating players with the intent to score more runs to win more games, strikeouts are just outs, and when they come with a higher hard hit rate, ks can be acceptable.

agreed with @thelanges5, from a fan’s perspective more balls in play is more fun to watch.

 

[Parfigliano]

1 hour ago, thelanges5 said:

Strikeouts are boring. Strikeouts looking are infuriating. When the ball is put in play, there’s a chance that something great could happen. 27 outs in a game and when 1/2 or more come via K the defense doesn’t have to do anything. 
 

That said, good article and I agree that the outcome of a strike out and any other out is the same.

No outs bases loaded strike out.  No outs bases loaded fly out to 20 ft in front of warning track.

These outs are not the same.

[ashbury]

It's a good summary of the probabilities, but amounts to preaching to the choir.

It won't convince the fan who believes

1. Ground ball: good, a chance anyway.
2. Fly ball: good, a chance anyway.
3. Whiff: bad, no chance

The problem is when you conflate results with what the batter was trying to accomplish.  The latter is much more complex to analyze.  The table of probabilities concerns itself with the outcomes, and you might say that it suffers from the weakness of not considering the alternative outcomes that could have happened from the same approach at the plate.  But the Whiff Bad point of view is even worse because for strikeouts it only considers the outcome while for groundballs especially it subtly mixes in the view that the ball might sneak past the infielder anyway, ignoring that those outcomes are already included in a batters hit total or the records kept on errors.  This is exemplified when excusing a mediocre batter, "sure, he hits only .200, but he hardly ever strikes out."

Compare the above list of 3 outcomes, versus the paragraph I just wrote to delve a little into it, and it's not surprising that the former has a lot of staying power.  Baseball's just a game after all, not an exercise in Bayesian probabilities for most people.

The batter who strikes out when trying to launch a three-run homer to win the game doesn't get credit for that potential homer in that particular at bat. Which is fine, but even those homers that a decent power hitter gets are devalued by the anti-strikeout fan with a mention of the Ks that go with it.  Decent singles hitters aren't held to that same standard - "oh, sure, but he grounds out too much" does not factor into many discussions.

The batter who strikes out by looking at a close pitch on a 3-2 count may have judged that his best chance for a good outcome was to lay off of what looks like an unhittable pitch down and away.  The cases where he guesses right are simply chalked up on the scoresheet as a walk, which many fans will immediately denigrate as not as good as a single, ignoring the situation that on this pitch a base hit was unlikely.

The batter who grounds out may have done so because he tried to pull a pitch that was farther outside than he expected, meekly grounding out to a middle infielder.  The fan who hates strikeouts will cheer that at least the batter gave himself a chance, even after the outcome is registered by the first-base umpire.

This doesn't even touch on the even more important (and complex) question of what happened earlier in the count.  That backward K may have occurred because it was set up on the previous pitch when the batter swung through a meatball pitch that might have gone for extra bases.

It's very hard to construct an apples-to-apples argument because the focus on the outcome is only part of the story, and the typical fan understands this when it comes to grounders and flyballs but gives no benefit of the doubt to the result that's a K.  Partial analyses are dangerous because they are true but misleading.

Of course all analyses are partial, so one has to pick where they think stopping is least dangerous.  As I implied, the probability tables in the referenced article are also a partial analysis.  The whiffs-are-bad fans simply choose a different stopping point than others.  No one has a complete analysis.

[USAFChief]

The same folks who claim K's are the same as any other out on offense turn around and slobber all over themselves over K's for pitchers. 

It can't be both ways.

If Ks are better than pitching to contact for pitchers, they have to be worse for hitters.

Striking out is the worst possible outcome for a hitter. Case closed.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

The same folks who claim K's are the same as any other out on offense turn around and slobber all over themselves over K's for pitchers. 

It can't be both ways.

If Ks are better than pitching to contact for pitchers, they have to be worse for hitters.

Striking out is the worst possible outcome for a hitter. Case closed.

Is a triple play better for hitters?

[nicksaviking]

The Twins clearly have been wavering on this theory for over half a decade. Bomba Squad succeeded in 2019 = strikeouts are fine. Bomba Squad failed in 2020 = strikeouts are bad. And their draft classes reflected this shift.

Then, we have a shortage of power in 2022 so let's sign some boppers again in 2023 = oof, Gallo, Taylor, Wallner and Julian are just too much for one roster, let's over-correct in 2024. But yikes, these guys don't strike out but ALSO don't generate runs?

I mean, I agree with the article, but offensively, it's all a balancing game. You aren't going to win the World Series with nine Jim Thomes, but you also aren't going to win the World Series with nine Luis Arraez's either. But I guess when in doubt, go for the Thomes.

 

[USAFChief]

3 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Is a triple play better for hitters?

Youre smarter than this, but I'll play along.

Yes, sometimes putting the ball in play results in multiple outs. And?  Sometimes, it results in runs. 

Strikeouts NEVER* result in runs. 

Striking out is the worst possible outcome for a hitter. Regardless the pointless, illogical counter argument about "double plays." 

Double plays only result from other hitters NOT striking out. 

*Yes, I know a K can result in a run if the catcher doesn't catch the 3rd strike. 

[thelanges5]

Lucky for us I don’t think the Borg strikeout. They only hit situationally. 

 

[DocBauer]

7 hours ago, Parfigliano said:

No outs bases loaded strike out.  No outs bases loaded fly out to 20 ft in front of warning track.

These outs are not the same.

And a double play ball with the bases loaded and now there's 2 outs. Did a run even score on that double play?

I get what you're saying about the long fly ball. In this instance a run scores, and another batter comes up and gets a chance to maybe get a hit. And there's been a few times the last couple of years where I would have given anything for that outcomes. 

But what if that fly ball is in short left or right field? Then it's no better or worse than a K.

But nothing kills rallies more than a double play ball either. I'd rather have the K and next batter up than hit in to a double play.

K's are great for your pitcher, not so good for your hitter. But GENERALLY speaking, a K is the same as any other out, and better than some outs. A deeply hit sacrifice fly vs a K? Sure, the SF wins every time in that scenario.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

Youre smarter than this, but I'll play along.

Yes, sometimes putting the ball in play results in multiple outs. And?  Sometimes, it results in runs. 

Strikeouts NEVER* result in runs. 

Striking out is the worst possible outcome for a hitter. Regardless the pointless, illogical counter argument about "double plays." 

Double plays only result from other hitters NOT striking out. 

*Yes, I know a K can result in a run if the catcher doesn't catch the 3rd strike. 

Are you sure? My wife reminds me of my stupidity very regularly.

The result of a hit is affected by the batter, is hard hit, barrel, launch angle and such, no?

what can a hitter do, to increase the hard hit, barrel, launch angle? Are there drawbacks to these types of swings?

we’re missing some nuance here….

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Are you sure? My wife reminds me of my stupidity very regularly.

The result of a hit is affected by the batter, is hard hit, barrel, launch angle and such, no?

what can a hitter do, to increase the hard hit, barrel, launch angle? Are there drawbacks to these types of swings?

we’re missing some nuance here….

I don't see any room for nuance. 

Everyone can pick out a tree and lose sight of the forest.  "Double plays!"  Hell, for that matter, Ks can be part of a double play too.

Think big picture. Striking out is simply the worst possible outcome of a PA. That a ground ball occasionally results in 2 outs misses the big picture. 

27 consecutive Ks cannot result in any runs. 27 consecutive non-Ks might score. 

Now muktiply that over a season.

Think big picture, not individual PAs.

 

[Linus]

Couple of points.  One is that adopting an approach of prioritizing contact is not something you can pull out of your back pocket once a week when there is a man on third and one out and the go back to swinging from your heels.

Second, if strikouts are the ultimate outcome for pitchers then they HAVE to be the worst outcome for a batter.  They are competing sides of the same coin.  If the argument for a strikeout as a hitter is they didn’t ground into a double play then the double play is the ultimate best outcome for a pitcher which means they should pitch to weak contact to induce said double play.  I’m not some old geezer that hates strikouts (they are boring) but you can’t logically make the argument that they are no worse than any other out.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

9 hours ago, USAFChief said:

I don't see any room for nuance. 

Everyone can pick out a tree and lose sight of the forest.  "Double plays!"  Hell, for that matter, Ks can be part of a double play too.

Think big picture. Striking out is simply the worst possible outcome of a PA. That a ground ball occasionally results in 2 outs misses the big picture. 

27 consecutive Ks cannot result in any runs. 27 consecutive non-Ks might score. 

Now muktiply that over a season.

Think big picture, not individual PAs.

 

You aren’t wrong about Ks being bad. I agree they are bad, I just see them as a biproduct of something good.
https://community.fangraphs.com/the-importance-of-hard-hit-percentage/

if your hard hit rate increases so does batting average, OBP, OPS and with those metrics increase, so does runs scored, and Ks.

Over the course of 6,000 plate appearances, Ks increase at a slower rate than ISO or wRC+. scoring more runs is better than scoring fewer runs.

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

You aren’t wrong about Ks being bad. I agree they are bad, I just see them as a biproduct of something good.
https://community.fangraphs.com/the-importance-of-hard-hit-percentage/

if your hard hit rate increases so does batting average, OBP, OPS and with those metrics increase, so does runs scored, and Ks.

Over the course of 6,000 plate appearances, Ks increase at a slower rate than ISO or wRC+. scoring more runs is better than scoring fewer runs.

"K's are a necessary biproduct of SLG" is a different argument than "Ks aren't any worse than a fly ball out."

I don't necessarily agree that K's inevitably must rise with increased SLG, but i dont know. And if true, would, to a point, likely increase runs.

I do think MLB has gone well past the point where that balance is justified. 

I think, at minimum, hitters should adjust for situation, and with 2 strikes at least, do everything to not K. I believe that will likely increase runs too.

But back to the point...a K is the single worst thing a hitter can do. I don't see how that's controversial in any way. If K's are necessary to further other outcomes, that doesn't change this simple fact.

[USAFChief]

10 hours ago, Linus said:

Couple of points.  One is that adopting an approach of prioritizing contact is not something you can pull out of your back pocket once a week when there is a man on third and one out and the go back to swinging from your heels.

 

I don't think that's true. I think a hitter can, and should, practice and learn more than one swing. 

A 2-0 swing generally shouldn't be the same as a 1-2 swing. Particularly when situation is included. 

I believe baseball has largely gotten away from this concept, but it's  been a voluntary change, not an unavoidable one.

 

[Linus]

30 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

I don't think that's true. I think a hitter can, and should, practice and learn more than one swing. 

A 2-0 swing generally shouldn't be the same as a 1-2 swing. Particularly when situation is included. 

I believe baseball has largely gotten away from this concept, but it's  been a voluntary change, not an unavoidable one.

 

Let me rephrase.  I think hitters should have different approaches for different situations but this has to be used consistently so the hitter can be good at it.  To pull out you contact swing once a week means you are likely not to be good at it when you need it.  For me, there are situations where I can accept a strikeout no problem.  Down by one, nobody on and two outs with a guy with legit power at the plate - go ahead and give it a rip to try and tie it.  I don’t care about a strikeout here.

[Twodogs]

I hope this argument continues all the way into July when they induct Ichiro Suzuki into the Hall of Fame.  

 

I think balance is the most important.  I feel like the straight analytics guys believe there is only one true great player.  That said player has to fit certain criteria to be a great player.  I believe the best baseball team are made up of players that provide balance.  Yeah you need an occasional strike out prone hitter or two in a lineup to provide that extra pop.  But you also need a couple of those guys that hit those occasional ground balls and cause havoc on the basepaths.  If you have a one robot type player a pitching staff can figure out how to get that one guy out and they will get everyone out up and down the lineup.  But if you mix in a Tony Gwynn here or there then the pitching strategies change when there are guys on base.  Not too many pitchers realistically care about a solo shot.  Three of those over 7 innings mixed in with a ton of strikeouts usually results in a win for the pitcher.  Now mix in a couple of guys that don't K and now one of those bombs is a 3 run shot and you've got a win.  I think what is being missed here is that there is a need in every lineup for all of the different types of hitters.  Reggie Jackson K'd more than anyone, but he wouldn't have been as successful if everyone in his lineups K'd just as much as he did.  He wouldn't have gotten as many at bats, nor would he have had as many RBI's as the bases would have been more empty with all of the K'd.  So in my opinion there is a place for all of those types of hitters to make a lineup less predictable and more successful in all situations, not just some situations.  

 

Now on to the next argument, all bunts are bad.  Wait a minute, I think Rod Carew is calling?

[Craig Arko]

38 minutes ago, Twodogs said:

I hope this argument continues all the way into July when they induct Ichiro Suzuki into the Hall of Fame.  

 

I think balance is the most important.  I feel like the straight analytics guys believe there is only one true great player.  That said player has to fit certain criteria to be a great player.  I believe the best baseball team are made up of players that provide balance.  Yeah you need an occasional strike out prone hitter or two in a lineup to provide that extra pop.  But you also need a couple of those guys that hit those occasional ground balls and cause havoc on the basepaths.  If you have a one robot type player a pitching staff can figure out how to get that one guy out and they will get everyone out up and down the lineup.  But if you mix in a Tony Gwynn here or there then the pitching strategies change when there are guys on base.  Not too many pitchers realistically care about a solo shot.  Three of those over 7 innings mixed in with a ton of strikeouts usually results in a win for the pitcher.  Now mix in a couple of guys that don't K and now one of those bombs is a 3 run shot and you've got a win.  I think what is being missed here is that there is a need in every lineup for all of the different types of hitters.  Reggie Jackson K'd more than anyone, but he wouldn't have been as successful if everyone in his lineups K'd just as much as he did.  He wouldn't have gotten as many at bats, nor would he have had as many RBI's as the bases would have been more empty with all of the K'd.  So in my opinion there is a place for all of those types of hitters to make a lineup less predictable and more successful in all situations, not just some situations.  

 

Now on to the next argument, all bunts are bad.  Wait a minute, I think Rod Carew is calling?

Sure, it also helps to have Hall of Fame caliber skills. Best two-strike hitter I’ve seen in recent memory was Joe Mauer. He’s a generational talent.

I do agree completely that the best lineups feature a mix of hitting styles. When everyone is swinging for the fences its really quite boring to watch. 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

4 hours ago, Twodogs said:

I hope this argument continues all the way into July when they induct Ichiro Suzuki into the Hall of Fame.  

 

I think balance is the most important.  I feel like the straight analytics guys believe there is only one true great player.  That said player has to fit certain criteria to be a great player.  I believe the best baseball team are made up of players that provide balance.  Yeah you need an occasional strike out prone hitter or two in a lineup to provide that extra pop.  But you also need a couple of those guys that hit those occasional ground balls and cause havoc on the basepaths.  If you have a one robot type player a pitching staff can figure out how to get that one guy out and they will get everyone out up and down the lineup.  But if you mix in a Tony Gwynn here or there then the pitching strategies change when there are guys on base.  Not too many pitchers realistically care about a solo shot.  Three of those over 7 innings mixed in with a ton of strikeouts usually results in a win for the pitcher.  Now mix in a couple of guys that don't K and now one of those bombs is a 3 run shot and you've got a win.  I think what is being missed here is that there is a need in every lineup for all of the different types of hitters.  Reggie Jackson K'd more than anyone, but he wouldn't have been as successful if everyone in his lineups K'd just as much as he did.  He wouldn't have gotten as many at bats, nor would he have had as many RBI's as the bases would have been more empty with all of the K'd.  So in my opinion there is a place for all of those types of hitters to make a lineup less predictable and more successful in all situations, not just some situations.  

 

Now on to the next argument, all bunts are bad.  Wait a minute, I think Rod Carew is calling?

https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/batted-ball/
 

“A line drive produces 1.26 runs per out, while fly balls produce 0.13 runs per out and ground balls produce 0.05 runs per out. In other words, batters want to hit lots of line drives and fly balls, while pitchers generally want to cause batters to hit ground balls.”

going with my previous post, soft and medium hits have a negative correlation to k rate and ground balls have an extreme reduction in runs per out.

Succinctly, the traditional two strike approach, while vastly superior to a fan (especially this one) is bad for scoring more runs over the course of a season 

 

[Twodogs]

7 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/batted-ball/
 

“A line drive produces 1.26 runs per out, while fly balls produce 0.13 runs per out and ground balls produce 0.05 runs per out. In other words, batters want to hit lots of line drives and fly balls, while pitchers generally want to cause batters to hit ground balls.”

going with my previous post, soft and medium hits have a negative correlation to k rate and ground balls have an extreme reduction in runs per out.

Succinctly, the traditional two strike approach, while vastly superior to a fan (especially this one) is bad for scoring more runs over the course of a season 

 

Line drives have a negative correlation to K rate.  Trying to hit it out of the park has a positive correlation to K rate.  You kind of proved me right with the runs scored per line drive.  Line drives turn into home runs.  But most line drives turn into base hits and doubles.  When hitters are trying to hit home runs they tend to hit fly balls.  A lot of fly balls leave the park, but a lot of those swings turn into K's also.  How many line drives did Tony Gwynn hit?  The idea is that you can stay back a little let the ball travel and hit a line drive.  AKA Joe Mauer.  You can't really stay back trying to hit a bomb, you kinda need to catch that out front which gives you less time to see spin etc....  I can name line drive hitters all day long that don't produce hardly any K's. The argument wasn't that line drives were bad it was that K's are bad.  And I said some K's are ok, just can't have a whole lineup of them.

[Doctor Gast]

I'm in the camp that SO do matter. When you put the ball in play, you are increasing the opportunity to get a hit & forcing the defense to make the play giving the hitter the opportunity to get on base. IMO you need to motivate base runners to steal to eliminate the force out or DP & makes the game so much more entertaining than watching a batter whiffing & sitting down. If SOs aren't important, then why has TOR had so much difficulty getting to the postseason & advancing when they do? Hitting a solo HR when the team doesn't need it in a low leverage situation & striking out when we do in a high leverage situation is very counter-productive. We have to do a better job of guarding the plate, especially with 2 outs which seems to me they are trying to do that. 

[Eris]

The challenge here is that the statistics are accumulated over an entire season or more and having a player who has a higher K% because of trying to achieve more power will statistically result in more runs over this period . The metric being used is the number of runs scored, not how many times a run scores. In the playoffs, or in the case of a specific desired outcome, e.g., 2 outs with a runner on 3B and team needing 1 run.  In this scenario, most people would prefer to have Ichiro Suzuki or Joe Mauer at the plate as compared to Aaron Judge because the probability that a runs scores will be higher with Suzuki or Mauer. However, were this situation to repeat itself 20 times, it is quite likely the Judge will drive in more runs because some of his hits will be home runs. 
 

There are also situations where the opposite is true, Where a HR is needed an the player most likely to achieve that strikes out almost 40% of the time but hits a HR every 12 at bats  

 

[The Great Hambino]

I feel like the long game of telephone that is internet discourse can lead to sound concepts getting twisted into these short definitive statements that were never intended represent the concept but end up becoming the focal point of all debate and lead us all away from what the concept was in the first place.

"Strikeouts can be a worthwhile trade-off for more walks and power" becomes "strikeouts don't matter"

"Teams historically bunt more often than they should" becomes "you should never bunt."

"Raw RBI totals aren't a great way to determine a hitter's value without context" becomes "RBIs don't matter."

The items on the left are sound concepts worthy of reasonable debate.  But the items on the right seem to carry the day in discourse as both proponents and opponents latch on and defend (or attack) to the death a stance that no one really should've been taking in the first place.

The thing about strikeouts is that they are a bad result (I hope this is obvious), but they are also a byproduct of things that everyone agrees are good. 

Hitting the ball harder is good.  Extra base hits drive up run production more than singles.  No one should dispute this.  But hitting the ball harder means swinging harder, and swinging harder leads to more whiffs.  So if you swing harder, you'll strike out more.  Is the increase in strikeouts worth it?  It depends on how much extra power and extra base hits you're generating from it.

Working the count is good.  It drives up the opponent's pitch count.  It allows your teammates to see more pitches.  It means swinging at fewer bad pitches.  It results in more walks.  But it also results in more 2 strike counts, so it's also going to lead to more chances to strike out.  Are all the benefits of working a count worth the additional strikeouts?  It depends on how much more you're getting on base, or how much more quickly you're chasing or wearing down the starter, or how much deeper you can make them dip into their bullpen.

Context is needed to answer these questions.  It's not helpful to complain about strikeouts without examining why they're happening or what you're getting along with them.  If the goal was just to strike out as little as possible without any consideration for the quality of ball being put in play, then the Dodgers and Mets would be fighting over who can send the biggest bag of cash to Willians Astudillo.  Sadly, that isn't the case.

So let's at least try to put strikeouts in context before we decide how important or unimportant they are.  The Yankees and Dodgers got to the World Series last year because they each ranked in the top 2 of their league in runs, homers, walks, and OPS (and not batting average, but that's a discussion for another day).  It didn't really matter that their strikeout rankings were more pedestrian (Yankees 7th in the AL, Dodgers 4th in the NL).  Or to put it another way: the Twins stuck out less than both teams, yet the champagne at Target Field remains unpopped because they were well behind them in those more important categories.

[Twodogs]

Great point context is key.  That's why I was just saying that a lineup needs to be balanced.  A couple of high K guys are ok if they are coming up to bat with guys on base, so when they do hit that one bomb here and there it's doing some damage.  

 

https://www.mlb.com/stats/team/2024

 

I pulled up the K totals of teams and Seattle and Colorado led the league in K's.  Followed by I think Boston, Pittsburgh, and Oakland.  Not exactly your high powered offenses.  The Dodgers and the Yankees finished 19th and 20th overall in K's, so in the bottom half of the league, or in the category of closer to the least amount of K's rather than the most K's.  K's aren't good for everyone, but maybe they don't hurt as bad if only a couple of guys rack a few of them up.  

[bean5302]

On 3/1/2025 at 7:45 PM, DocBauer said:

And a double play ball with the bases loaded and now there's 2 outs. Did a run even score on that double play?...

Yes. Shortstop running to the 1B side (or 2B running towards 3B side), makes the catch, steps on 2nd, no play at the plate, no play at 3B, throws to first base 6-4-3 (or 4-3). Run scores. Happens more than a few times a year.

+1 run scores, 2 outs, runner at 3B

[bean5302]

A single strikeout prone player may not be an issue. Having an entire lineup constructed with them makes it very hard to manufacture consistent runs. Twins fans have seen the outcome first hand. These evaluations are based on a single player striking out, but it's also a garbage evaluation because it should be evaluating strike out vs. putting a ball in play. Not strike out vs. other outs. Why? Because putting the ball in play doesn't always result in an out. A strikeout virtually always does.

[LambchoP]

As has already been said, it's a balancing act. Major power hitters usually strike out more often. You'll take the K's in exchange for the home runs. But you also need guys on base for the power hitters,meaning less strikeout prone, high OBP guys. A good lineup has a good balance of both.