WINNING WITH WHIFFS
Strikeouts keep rising, but success still possible for teams leading pack
The Houston Astros could obliterate the major league record for strikeouts this season. But the Atlanta Braves entered Tuesday with the best record in the majors after a winter of ignoring warnings of dire consequences from adding to their collection of prolific whiffers.
Strikeouts are up across baseball. Don’t sneer at the small sample size of just over a week of the new season; they’ve been climbing steadily for five years. But does anybody care? “I’m swinging at strikes, which I’m happy about,” Cleveland Indians DH Mark Reynolds says.
That sentiment, from the man who has epitomized where the strikeout is going in baseball, pretty much sums up the debate. Anybody can strike out. It’s how you do it and what else you do that makes the difference.
Nobody makes contact less often than Reynolds, who has led his league in strikeouts four times, including a season-record 223 in 2009, and was part of the Arizona Diamondbacks who set the team record in 2010.
But he entered Tuesday with 140 homers since the beginning of 2009 — including four in his first six games this season — and gets on base well above the major league norm.
“That’s what he has,” Indians manager Terry Francona says. “He’ll miss sometimes, and then he’s a game-changer. You’ve got to be patient. You know he’s going to run into some.
“Hopefully he runs into a lot.”
Striking out is like the national debt; it doesn’t seem like a good idea, but nobody seems certain at what point it’s a debilitating problem.
But this year’s Astros entered Tuesday going down on strikes 11.7 times a game. No team — not even those ’10 Diamondbacks — has averaged double figures.
Three teams — the Oakland Athletics, Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles — made the playoffs in 2012 despite being among the top six in the majors in strikeouts. But nobody’s confusing this year’s Houston team with a contender.
Last year’s Astros, with 107 losses, were second in the majors in strikeouts, behind the Athletics.
One team did decide enough was enough.
“When you have a lineup with guys with an abundance of strikeouts, you end up hoping for a big inning; you have a chance to score maybe two or three times during a game,” says Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers, who set out a couple of years ago to purge his team of its record-setting ways.
Other teams gladly took his players. Baltimore (in 2011 and 2012) and Cleveland (this year) embraced Reynolds. The Atlanta Braves made outfielder Justin Upton a focal point of their offseason upgrades.
Upton struck out 121 times last season — tied for his lowest total in five major league seasons — but four other current Braves fanned more, including Upton’s brother, B.J., signed as a free agent by the Braves.
If the current Braves stick to career rates, Atlanta could be pushing 1,400 strikeouts, which would rank second all time. But general manager Frank Wren isn’t concerned.
He says the team’s analysts haven’t been able to show a direct correlation between strikeouts and the effectiveness of the offense, but he thinks strikeouts might not be as detrimental in lineups that include four or five 30-homer players.
DIFFERING VIEWS
Towers isn’t so sure.
“With lots of strikeouts, you become a streaky ballclub,” he says. “In 2010, we had a lot, got a little bit better in ’11, a little bit better last year. Strikeouts are still going to be a part of the game. But they produce quick innings. You’re not able to get into the other teams’ bullpens as soon. You’re not getting to the weaknesses of other ballclubs.”
But does reducing strikeouts also mean reducing the power production of strikeout-prone sluggers?
“We still like the homer, I’m not going to lie,” Towers says. “But we don’t want to strictly rely on it. Last year, we were 17-40 when we didn’t homer.”
Home runs and strikeouts are two of what have come to be known as baseball’s “three true outcomes,” results of a time at-bat that the defense can’t impact. The third is the walk.
A key component is analyzing how the strikeout fits into modern baseball.
Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox came within one strikeout last year of matching Reynolds’ record. But he also became the first major leaguer ever to have more than half of his trips to the plate result in one of the three true outcomes: 222 strikeouts, 105 walks, 41 homers.
“There’s always those outliers,” Towers says. “The worst-case scenario is the guy who hits home runs and strikes out, doesn’t walk.”
Dunn totaled the most strikeouts — 598 — in the majors from 2010 to 2012. His .212 batting average over that period was 44 points below the major league average. But his onbase (.330) and slugging percentages (.440) were above big-league norms.
In fact, of the 15 players with the most strikeouts during that time frame, four had a batting average higher than the .256 major league average over that time. Yet all 15 had on-base percentages above the .322 norm, and 14 had slugging percentages over the .402 average.
STRIKING OUT MORE ACCEPTED
Jim Thome hasn’t retired, though he’s not with a team this season after 22 years in the majors. He ranks second all time in strikeouts and seventh in walks. He also was the product of the first generation of power hitters told to not cut down their big swings just because they had two strikes. He understood he was paid to hit home runs.
“If you hit strikes, good things will happen,” he says. “I truly believe that.”
That brings us back to Reynolds’ self-assessment.
He made contact with 65% of the pitches he swung at over the last three seasons, easily the lowest percentage among major league regulars. But over that period, 173 players swung more often than Reynolds at pitches outside of the strike zone.
And the Indians aren’t asking him to carry their offense. He bats seventh in a scenario Francona hopes will bring him to the plate often with runners on base, forcing pitchers to give him pitches in the strike zone.
In his first 27 plate appearances of 2013, he came up with 25 runners on base.
All of the analysis and justification falls flat, though, in a situation like Houston’s. It was shut out three times in its first seven games. The Texas Rangers’ Yu Darvish missed a perfect game by one out vs. Houston.
The Astros’ Chris Carter and Brett Wallace entered Tuesday tied for the major league lead with 13 strikeouts each and teammate Rick Ankiel had 12 — in 14 plate appearances. Making it worse: The trio amassed one home run ( by Ankiel) and two walks.
The one-week snapshot might be worse than what transpires over the full season, but none of them has a track record in the majors or minors that suggests a drastic turnaround.
Still, the overall major league strikeout rate — 20.7% of all plate appearances this season — continues the trend of increases every season since 2008’s 17.5%.
“We accept strikeouts more,” says Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, who was a hitting coach in the Indians system when Thome turned pro. “As the home run has come into play more and more, teams want to see the production.”
So far, enough teams are seeing good enough results to let them just keep swinging.