"No matter what the stat boys say, you put the ball in play." - Dusty

[Cant Touch This]

If I understand this correctly, there is actually a request to fire Dusty because he said striking out is bad.

All righty then.

[Tony Cloninger]

Anyone have the stat of how many times hitters struck out.....by taking strike 3 as opposed to swinging it.... since the 70's?

Pitchers may be better...but hitters did not play the take and take game, or were so obviously outguessed as much as today's hitters seem to be.

[SteelSD]

Why should Dusty be fired for being right?

Strikeouts might be just another out, but unlike other outs, you can't score or have an opportunity to score if you don't make contact. It's always been a little bit hypocritical to praise pitchers who can avoid bats but not criticize hitters for missing pitches.

It's not hypocritical at all. Makes perfect sense. Pitchers face all hitters. Hitters only perform for themselves. That's an important distinction.

Over the course of a season, pitchers face a diverse sample of hitters and, excepting a tiny smattering of outliers, don't have any control of the outcome of batted balls in play or a team's defensive proficiency; thus, preventing balls in play makes 100% sense from the pitcher perspective.

For hitters, high K totals are generally a residual of power and plate discipline; not a sign of ineffectiveness. For the powerful and disciplined, a change in approach targeting fewer K's will likely have the effect of creating more Outs and less power.

Unfortunately, the Reds don't have enough of those powerful, disciplined types. If the Reds did, Baker wouldn't be grumping about 'stats guys' and strikeouts. What Baker should be disturbed with is the relative quality of his offensive players past Bruce, Votto, and Choo; who happen to be numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the team in...drumroll...strikeouts.

The Reds have a mediocre offense. If lowering the team K totals comes about from bringing in better hitters, then awesome. Otherwise, worrying about K rates is a non-starter.

[Brutus]

It's not hypocritical at all. Makes perfect sense. Pitchers face all hitters. Hitters only perform for themselves. That's an important distinction.

Over the course of a season, pitchers face a diverse sample of hitters and, excepting a tiny smattering of outliers, don't have any control of the outcome of batted balls in play or a team's defensive proficiency; thus, preventing balls in play makes 100% sense from the pitcher perspective.

For hitters, high K totals are generally a residual of power and plate discipline; not a sign of ineffectiveness. For the powerful and disciplined, a change in approach targeting fewer K's will likely have the effect of creating more Outs and less power.

Unfortunately, the Reds don't have enough of those powerful, disciplined types. If the Reds did, Baker wouldn't be grumping about 'stats guys' and strikeouts. What Baker should be disturbed with is the relative quality of his offensive players past Bruce, Votto, and Choo; who happen to be numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the team in...drumroll...strikeouts.

The Reds have a mediocre offense. If lowering the team K totals comes about from bringing in better hitters, then awesome. Otherwise, worrying about K rates is a non-starter.

It actually makes no sense.

The reason pitchers don't want to give up balls in play is because it forces the defense to make plays. It makes no sense whatsoever why you wouldn't want hitters putting pressure on defense to make plays as well.

[dougdirt]

You're not walking when you strike out.

Clearly. But you can have good results when you don't make contact in a PA.

[RollyInRaleigh]

Clearly. But you can have good results when you don't make contact in a PA.

.....And Bad.

[dougdirt]

.....And Bad.

We already established that Randy.

[jojo]

You're not walking when you strike out.

A hitter can strikeout and end up standing safely on first.

[jojo]

It actually makes no sense.

The reason pitchers don't want to give up balls in play is because it forces the defense to make plays. It makes no sense whatsoever why you wouldn't want hitters putting pressure on defense to make plays as well.

If it made the hitter a less effective hitter, it would be the dumbest thing to make a hitter do. One gets the sense Dusty would've kept Adam Dunn in Louisville.

[SteelSD]

It actually makes no sense.

The reason pitchers don't want to give up balls in play is because it forces the defense to make plays. It makes no sense whatsoever why you wouldn't want hitters putting pressure on defense to make plays as well.

You're dramatically oversimplifying things.

If powerful, disciplined hitters could simply just choose to cut down on their strikeout rates, do you really think that it wouldn't come at the cost of something else?

[Old NDN]

If I understand this correctly, there is actually a request to fire Dusty because he said striking out is bad.

All righty then.

Nah, only if they blow the wild card lead.

[AtomicDumpling]

If I understand this correctly, there is actually a request to fire Dusty because he said striking out is bad.

All righty then.

The fact that Dusty singled out strikeouts exposes (again) his lack of understanding of how offense works. His inference is that strikeouts are worse than other outs on average, which has been proven beyond all shadow of doubt to be false. No sense in going over the data again since it has been done in dozens of other Redszone threads. Some people realize this, others don't know it yet, and others refuse to believe it. But its true.

Dusty believes that hitters should change their approach to make more contact, which modern coaching has revealed to be a bad decision. A hitter should gear his approach to maximize his offensive production without worrying about what type of outs he makes. The goal is to avoid an out while getting as many bases as possible. How you make your outs doesn't matter, how many outs you make along with how much damage you do when you don't make an out is what separates good hitters from bad.

A contact-oriented approach leads to weaker contact, which leads to fewer hits -- especially extra-base hits. To be a productive major league hitter you need to hit the ball HARD, not merely make contact. To hit the ball hard you need to swing hard, which causes you to swing and miss more often. The harder you hit the ball the more likely you are to get a hit, and the more likely that hit will be a gamechanging extra-base hit.

You also need to take walks to be productive. To take walks you need to go deep in the count. Going deep in the count also makes it more likely you will strike out (you can't walk or strikeout on the first couple pitches). As long as your K/BB ratio is 2/1 or better your OBP (and hence your offensive productivity) will increase if you take enough pitches to get deep into counts. Exposing yourself to the strikeout can actually increase your OBP because of the walks that go along with seeing a lot of pitches. It is worth it for many players to take more strikeouts because of the walks that go along with them (there are certain infrequent situations where this is less true).

If you make contact you can't walk. If you don't walk you can't have a stellar On-Base Percentage. If you don't have a stellar On-Base Percentage you can't be a star hitter.

There will always be an aversion to strikeouts amongst casual fans. They believe strikeouts are the ultimate failure because you couldn't even hit the ball! Of course we know there are much worse outcomes than a strikeout -- grounding into double plays, elimination of lead runners, runners getting doubled-off on liners, and runners thrown out after tagging up for example are much, much more harmful than a strikeout.

Teams have realized it is OK to have a higher percentage of the team's outs come in the form of the strikeout as long as that leads to more walks, hits and extra-base hits. For that reason they don't instruct their good hitters to maximize contact to avoid strikeouts. A poor hitter who can't hit the ball very hard might be well served by maximizing contact, but there aren't too many of those weaklings in the league anymore (Billy Hamilton, Tony Campana and the like).

Many of the best hitters in the league strike out frequently, including Joey Votto, Shin-Soo Choo and Jay Bruce. The guys who are least likely to make an out tend to strike out more than the out machines. Counter intuitive but true.

[dougdirt]

Many of the best hitters in the league strike out frequently, including Joey Votto, Shin-Soo Choo and Jay Bruce. The guys who are least likely to make an out tend to strike out more than the out machines. Counter intuitive but true.

Of the 15 highest rate strikeout guys, 11 have an OPS over .750.
Of the 15 lowest rate strikeout guys, 4 have an OPS over .750.

[RedEye]

The "stat boys" in Dusty lingo have come to be something like Boo Radley.

[AtomicDumpling]

It's not hypocritical at all. Makes perfect sense. Pitchers face all hitters. Hitters only perform for themselves. That's an important distinction.

Over the course of a season, pitchers face a diverse sample of hitters and, excepting a tiny smattering of outliers, don't have any control of the outcome of batted balls in play or a team's defensive proficiency; thus, preventing balls in play makes 100% sense from the pitcher perspective.

For hitters, high K totals are generally a residual of power and plate discipline; not a sign of ineffectiveness. For the powerful and disciplined, a change in approach targeting fewer K's will likely have the effect of creating more Outs and less power.

Unfortunately, the Reds don't have enough of those powerful, disciplined types. If the Reds did, Baker wouldn't be grumping about 'stats guys' and strikeouts. What Baker should be disturbed with is the relative quality of his offensive players past Bruce, Votto, and Choo; who happen to be numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the team in...drumroll...strikeouts.

The Reds have a mediocre offense. If lowering the team K totals comes about from bringing in better hitters, then awesome. Otherwise, worrying about K rates is a non-starter.

Excellent post.

I will add another reason that strikeouts work differently for pitchers than hitters. All good pitchers have high strikeout rates and low walk rates (good K/BB ratio) given sufficient sample size. Nearly all bad pitchers have poor K/BB ratios. Strikeouts are absolutely the key to success for pitchers. But the same is clearly not true for hitters. Many of the best hitters strike out a lot, and many of the worst hitters don't strike out much. Strikeouts are largely irrelevant for hitters because their success is determined by their OBP and SLG, and many hitters produce good OBP and SLG stats despite frequently striking out.