A swing and a mess: Strikeout era has dug in its heels
MIAMI » In his otherworldly 2000 season, Rockies icon Todd Helton hit .372, slugged 42 homers and 59 doubles, drove in 147 runs, and posted a 1.162 OPS.
In 580 at-bats, Helton struck out 61 times, a rate of just 10.5 percent.
Last season, Rockies shortstop Trevor Story batted .239, hit 24 home runs and 32 doubles, drove in 82 runs, and posted a .765 OPS. In 503 at-bats, Story struck out 191 times (37.9 percent), setting an unwelcome franchise record.
This is less a comparison of Helton and Story as it is an illustration of how Major League Baseball has dramatically changed. Baseball has become a swing-and-miss, allor-nothing game. The strikeout era is entrenched. Pitchers, who on average are throwing harder than ever, hunt for strikeouts every time they take the mound. More and more, hitters are swinging for the fences, long ago having disregarded the old baseball adage of choking up and getting the ball in play when you have two strikes.
For the 11th consecutive season, MLB is hurtling toward a record number of strikeouts. Through the first month of this season, hitters are on pace to fan 43,163 times, which would smash the record of 40,104 set last year. And for the first time, there will be a full month of baseball with more strikeouts than hits. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, through Thursday’s games, there were 6,003 hits and 6,392 strikeouts.
“Everything is so different now,” said Rockies all-star third baseman Nolan Arenado, who entered the weekend batting .342, with 14 whiffs in 73 at-bats (19.2 percent). “We are preaching about launch angles and getting the ball in the air and all of that. The strikeouts have come because of all of that.
“But listen, I hate striking out. I was reading an article the other day and Albert Pujols (the Angels slugger who’s on the verge of getting his 3,000th hit) was saying how much he hates all the strikeouts. He said it’s awful for the game. I agree with him. I mean, if I get off my best swing and I strike out, I’m OK with it. But overall, I hate all the strikeouts.”
Arenado, however, remains something of a throwback purist because high strikeout totals have become an accepted part of the game, even if that means longer at-bats, less action in the field and longer games.
Consider this historical perspective: In 1927, the year the Yankees’ famed “Murderers’ Row” dominated baseball, teams averaged about three strikeouts per game. A game’s strikeout average didn’t surpass four until 1952, didn’t top five until 1959 and didn’t go over six until 1994. It surpassed seven in 2010 and eight last season. This season, the Rockies are averaging 9.2 whiffs per game, third-highest in the National League. Which means that in over one-third of their outs, the Rockies don’t put the ball in play.
“Well, one side of the argument is this: If you’re striking out, you’re not hitting into a lot of double plays,” Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost said recently. “It was, like 10 years ago, when I think the analytical people started saying that strikeouts aren’t really that bad. They would much rather have one out than the chance for two.”
Pitchers’ plan has changed
It would be a mistake, however, to simply pin the mounting number of strikeouts on analytics or undisciplined hitters. A basic change in pitching philosophy is a big part of the equation, too. Trevor Story, 2017 Mark Reynolds, 2017
“As a pitcher, I really only want strikeouts, because nothing bad can happen when you strike somebody out,” said Rockies reliever Adam Ottavino, who has whiffed 26 of the 45 batters he has faced entering the weekend, a 57.8 strikeout percentage that leads all of baseball. “The game has evolved. Almost all the guys are capable of hitting homers now, and there are at least three guys on every team that go up there looking to homer.
“So they’re going to have a hard time cutting down on their swing, especially with two strikes. So I think you can say that in some situations, you can expose the hitter when he has two strikes and he’s got that big swing.”
According to Rockies veteran catcher Chris Iannetta, the firepower Andres Galarraga, 1996 Andres Galarraga, 1995 of contemporary pitchers is another reason for the mounting swings and misses.
“When I first came up (in 2007), we would sit in on scouting reports and they would say, ‘This guy has an average fastball of 8891 or maybe 91-92,” he said. “Now you sit in a meeting and they say, ‘This guy has an average fastball of 94-96 and nobody bats an eyelash. And we’re talking about middle relievers.”
Rockies manager Bud Black, who pitched in the majors from 1981-95, can’t help but long for the days when starting pitchers went significantly deeper into games, in part because they were content to get quick outs via groundballs or popups, reducing their pitch counts and saving the punch-outs for the critical moments later in Brad Hawpe, 2009 Andres Galarraga, 1997 the game.
Black’s prime example is righthander Rick Reuschel, who won 214 games and posted a 3.37 ERA over his 19-year career.
“Rick would get a scouting report and it would say, ‘This guy is a first-ball, fastball hitter,’ ” Black recalled. “So somebody would ask, ‘What are you going to throw him?’ And Rick would say, ‘I’m going to throw him a fastball, and I’m going to throw a fastball for a strike.’
“But the thing is, Rick was able to locate the pitch for a strike and with movement. Rick’s idea was, ‘Look, this guy is a first-ball hitter, so that means I’m going to get an out on the first pitch.’ That’s a pretty good way to approach it. But those days are long gone.”
Value of the strikeout
Ottavino, however, would still rather blow batters away with his lethal combination of fastballs and sliders.
“The whole ‘pitch-to-contact idea’ has a lot of problems,” he said. “It would be great if you could do it, but I tried it a lot in the minor leagues and I just got a lot of foul balls and my pitch count got really high. I would just get in a lot of trouble trying to do that.”
If strikeouts are ever going to decrease, it’s going to be up to the hitters to make changes. Story is still striking out a lot this season — he’s batting .253 with a 37.3 percent strikeout rate — and he’s trying to change his approach, at least a little bit, to make more contact.
“A lot of guys think there is a trade-off — the big swing for the home run,” he said. “For me, it has been that way in the past, but I don’t want it to be that way. The ultimate goal is to be the complete hitter, like Nolan (Arenado).”
Black sees Story making some progress.
“To be the best version of the player he can be, Trevor’s got to strike out less,” Black said. “Because if you strike out less, you Preston Wilson, 2003 Ian Stewart, 2009 are hitting the ball more, and a lot of things can happen.
“If you look at Trev, he doesn’t get the bloop hits. If he gets jammed, he doesn’t flip a hit over the first baseman’s head. It’s still sort of the same swing, all the time.
But he’s working on shortening that swing in certain situations — with two strikes on him or with men in scoring position — when all we need is a base hit. He’s trying to do that.”
Like Black, Cubs manager Joe Maddon doesn’t accept the idea that strikeouts don’t matter.
“I disagree with the group that says that strikeouts are just another out. It’s totally wrong,” Maddon said. “The runner on third base with less than two outs? That’s not just another out. You have to put the ball in play.
“With nobody on base and two outs? Go ahead and strike out, or hit a ball in the gap. That’s different. Runner on first base and two outs, a punch-out? I’m OK. But I don’t like it with a runner on second and two outs. I definitely don’t like it with a runner on third with less than two outs.”
Black thinks the tide might be turning.
“The saying has been ‘An out is an out, and it doesn’t matter how it occurs,’ ” Black said. “I heard that a lot 10-15 years ago. I hear that less now.”
Black cited the Houston Astros as a prime example. They won the World Series a year ago riding baseball’s best offense. They hit 238 home runs, finishing second in the majors behind the Yankees (241). But the athletic Astros also frequently put the ball in play, hitting a big-league-best .282 and striking out 66 fewer times than any other team. They reduced their whiffs from 1,452 in 2016 to 1,087 last year.
Alas, early returns this season suggest that the Astros have rejoined the pack. Entering the weekend, their 236 strikeouts (9.1 per game) were the sixth most in baseball. Brad Hawpe, 2007 Drew Stubbs, 2014