Your Team Needs to Strike Out More

Do a web search on "2014 strikeouts" and you will find a parade of articles postulating about a jump in Ks this year. 

"Seattle Mariners: Strikeout problem stalling offense"

"Where are all of the Johnny Cueto strikeouts coming from?"

"What's behind all those strikeouts for Joe Mauer?"

"Strikeouts galore for the 2014 Mets"

For the seventh consecutive year, the strikeout rate has risen in April, to more than one every five plate appearances. Roughly 16 batters whiff in an average nine-inning game.

Theorized reasons for this trend are myriad. Fastball velocity has risen over the years, from an average of 89.8 mph in 2008 to 91.4 mph this season, according to Beyond the Box Score. Chris Moran notes in this BTB article that 12 pitchers had averaged 94 mph in an April start last year. That number was 25 with half of April to go in 2014.

There are other factors as well. Batters are swinging more at balls outside the strike zone and less at pitches inside it. That may be due to improved catcher framing, which has become a subject of much more emphasis now that cameras are observing every pitch and recording the result. Analysis has discovered that catchers can alter a significant number of ball/strike calls in the course of a game because umps are more likely to call strikes on pitches caught by the catcher if he doesn't move to retrieve the throw.

From an aesthetic standpoint, most fans are not enamored of this development. Few people pay to see a lot of wind-making. From a strategic standpoint, it seems obvious that strikeouts are a negative event for the team at bat -- after all, they are outs. But in a more general sense, the evidence suggests that strikeouts are very necessary evils.

In fact, strikeouts are often a tradeoff. Batters who swing hard and wait for their pitch -- i.e., pass on pitches they don't like even if they're in the strike zone -- tend to whiff frequently. But that strategy yields more walks, fewer double plays and more home runs. 

New research from the Hardball Times illustrates the actual correlations between strikeouts and other events. As you can see below, batters who fan more get on base slightly less (OBP) but hit for more power (SLG, ISO), ground into fewer twin killings (GIDP) and have a slightly higher batting average when they do make contact (BABIP), presumably because they hit the ball harder. On balance it's a positive tradeoff; more whiffs correlate with better overall hitting (wOBA).

Individual K rate and offensive statistic regression analysis
Stat	Correlation (R)
OBP	-0.07
SLG	0.19
ISO	0.40
wOBA	0.10
GIDP	-0.22
IFH	-0.27
HR/FB	0.53
IFFB%	-0.16
GB%	-0.28
FB%	0.31
BABIP	0.08
BB%	0.28

Obviously there's a limit to that relationship; if every batter struck out there would be no OBP, SLG, HR or scoring at all. And Major League baseball may have reached that tipping point. Scoring has declined more or less steadily during the seven years that strikeouts have risen.

All this may be premature -- a blip on the season's radar. But as part of a larger trend, it's probably not. And that means more Ks and fewer Rs the rest of the way. You've been warned.

You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic Batter

Would you like this defensively solid left-fielder batting in a key game for your team:

.320/.349/.563, 24 HR 74 RBI in 100 games? 

Not just yes, but hell yes, right? That's Rockie Carlos Gonzalez.

So you write Gonzalez's name in the lineup, and you get this -- .262/.279/.385, 10 HR 54 RBI, 10BB, 130K. What happened?

First, let's recognize how utterly abysmal that is. A .279 OBP is cactus enema bad, and the result in this case of a player who walks less than Stephen Hawking. It's 48 points worse than Bud Harrelson's embarrassing lifetime mark. It's 15 points lower than Mike Hampton's lifetime OBP.

Yes, that's the pitcher Mike Hampton.

How did an All-Star caliber outfielder morph into an over-matched Double-A wind machine? Simple: The Rockies are playing a road game.

Carlos Gonzalez is a terror at Coors -- .375/.414/.730, 38 HR 94 RBI, 28BB 68 K. (I've doubled his home and away counting stats so you can compare them to his overall performance.) That's Mark McGwire on andro. But for some reason, Cargo can't hit anywhere else. This is good information if you're his manager. You'd probably want to make sure he's in the lineup in Denver, but you might want to give him a breather now and then elsewhere.

It also casts a shadow on his overall performance for the year, as documented at the top of this post. It raises the question of whether he's just a thin-air artifact who's not really the .320-with-power hitter his overall numbers suggest.

In an effort to spare a deceased horse further injury, I won't detail how Charlie Manuel gets the same raw deal when he expects to send his .281/.373/.578 first baseman to the plate and this shows up -- .231/313/.453 because the pitcher is right-brained and Ryan Howard turns into Eddie Gaedel when facing lefties. Suffice to say that it's very hard to make convincing MVP arguments for a guy who can be so easily neutralized.

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You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto

Andre Dawson enters the Hall of Fame today without altering its accounts much in either direction. He is the quintessential borderline Hall of Famer.

The raw data puts Dawson in the Hall. He alone, save for spectacular company -- Barry Bonds and Willie Mays -- hit 400 homers and stole 300 bases. An all-around performer, he won eight Gold Gloves, an MVP, finished second twice, made eight All-Star games and earned Rookie of the Year in 1977. In addition, he played his first 11 seasons in the cavern in Montreal, which simultaneously dampened his batting exploits and his knee cartilage. Make no mistake, voters do the mental math on two full years' worth of injuries that drained some of his impact.

Peel the skin on his career and the flaws emerge. His .323 lifetime OBP is the worst by an outfielder in Cooperstown and demonstrates that whatever else his talents, The Hawk was below average at the single most important regular player skill -- avoiding outs. He compensated by slugging .500 just four times over 21 years and overall hit 19% better than the average player, adjusting for his ballpark. Because that compares him to second basemen and catchers as well as outfielders, it's not Hall-level impressive. By way of comparison, Jim Rice, whom I've argued was clearly not Hall quality, hit 28% better than average. Is Jim Edmonds a Hall of Famer? He's hit 32% better than average.

In addition, Dawson padded the balance sheet by hanging around long after his skills had departed. His last four years in Boston and Florida got him into the 400-homer club despite failing to contribute wins in either city.

Where Andre Dawson really makes his HoF case is on the basepaths and in the field. The scouts and stats agree that he was an exceptional centerfielder, though the objective data suggests he lost his mojo in right, where he actually spent more of his career. He also swiped 314 bases at a 74% rate, which adds 84 runs of value to his bottom line.

All of which puts Dawson on the teeter-totter for me, a better laureate than Jim Rice, worse than Tim Raines, who hit significantly better and added 500 runs on the base paths. (To be fair, he wasn't in the same stratosphere as Dawson defensively.) But the writers gave him their imprimatur, so he's a Hall of Famer and no one, not even some amateur stat geek who couldn't hit a 40 mph curve ball, can take that away from him. And for all the electrons spilled over his admission, it doesn't add or detract from the Hall of Fame much at all.

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An Inconvenient Truth

What would you do with this player?

He brings a tin glove to a low-leverage defensive position. He's hitting .257/.329/.537 this year, or perhaps that was last year (.251 .339 .543). In other words, he has great power but doesn't get safely to the first three bases much.

His top speed is somewhere around Giambi, maybe Thome, and he fans more than a windmill. A left-handed swinger, he eats up righties, but southpaws own him by 54 points of OBP and 104 points of SLG. And all that is accomplished in a home park that smiles on all forms of offense while his teammates fill the bases for him.

Forgive me for suggesting this, but the Phillies ought to consider platooning Ryan Howard.

Howard is still a good hitter and his top-rung power alters the way pitchers approach the lineup. He walks a lot and is on pace to smack 40 homers for the fourth straight time...almost entirely against right-handed pitching.

Against southpaws he makes outs more than 70% of the time. That's Raid for rallies -- kills them dead. Almost certainly the Phils can find someone -- particularly playing in Citizens Bank Park -- who can spot Howard against left-handers and poke an occasional hit or coax a walk episodically. It would make the team a win or two better in a division in which that's likely to be the difference between playing for a flag or finding a fishing hole in October.

Here's the really bad news Phillies fans: the evidence suggests that Howard's on the Mo Vaughn plan, having already peaked at age 26-27. His good looks, ready smile and hale-fellow demeanor will serve him well in his second career, but they won't keep pitchers from walking Chase Utley and busting Howard high and hard if he continues to tail off. Charlie Manuel can delay that if he spells Howard against his lefty-throwing nemeses.
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The Persistence of Memory

Last week I examined how Tim Raines' generalist abilities and shadow skills have doomed him -- perhaps unfairly -- in our esteem and in Hall of Fame voting.

Today the flip side: Jim Rice.

As with Raines, I make no claim as to whether Rice should be a HOFer. We certainly remember him as a fearsome slugger who dominated baseball offensively for the better part of 12 years. Four times in his career he batted over .300, slugged 39 or more home runs and drove in at least 114. He finished in the top five in MVP voting six times. At the time, we thought that was the definition of a great player.

Today, our lens is more finely focused. We realize the value of walks, of OBP over batting average, of defense, of context and of double plays (in the negative.) And all of those elements line up against Jim Rice.

Let's take them in order. Rice didn't walk. He earned 60 free passes just once in his career, so despite his .298 BA he had a non-HOF .352 OBP. He was never much of a fielder, despite the long-standing New England rationalization that he had a special knack for predicting Green Monster caroms. Myriad retrospective defensive statistics, about which I am admitedly dubious, all agree that Rice was a liability in left field.

Left field, of course, is where many of history's best hitters roamed, and against whom Rice must be measured. It is also the least important defensive position on the field (as opposed to the DH, who is not on the field defensively) because neither range nor an arm are particularly relevant. Rice's competition for the Hall, besides Raines, includes Musial, Bonds, Ted and Billy Williams, Simmons, Henderson, Shoeless Joe, Yaz, Stargell and Kiner.

Jim Rice also played in a hitter's park his whole career. Fenway increases offense by 8% versus today's MLB stadiums, and it was likely higher in Rice's day. Then, when you factor in the 315 twin killings he grounded into, it effectively drops his OBP to .339 and his slugging percentage below .500.

What you have, after all that, is a mighty hitter for sure, but one who doesn't avoid outs, has no speed (58 steals and 34 CS is a net negative) and hurts you defensively. Moreover, his talent ebbed quickly, with his last good year at age 33. Suddenly he's much less Hall-worthy.

For fun, I compared Rice to Raines. Note that Raines played most of his career in Montreal's concrete cavern.

Player	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	H	HR	RS	RBI	SB
Tim Raines	.294	.385	.425	123	2605	170	1571	980	808
Jim Rice	.298	.352	.502	128	2452	382	1249	1451	58

OPS+ is on-base plus slugging relative to the rest of the league. A 100 OPS+ is exactly average. At 128, Rice was 28% better than the average hitter.

You can decide for yourself whether Jim Rice deserves a bust in Cooperstown. It appears, given his near-miss last year, that he's headed in. It also appears that regardless, he is diminished by perspective, in much the way Tim Raines' stature is enhanced.