Intersting Baseball Prospectus Stat I real last night....

[hebroncougar]

1 in 4.28 outs last year was made on a third strike. It's not just the Reds that are K'ing like crazy.

[Jaycint]

1 in 4.28 outs last year was made on a third strike. It's not just the Reds that are K'ing like crazy.

Wonder how that number compares to the rest of baseball history? Higher? Lower?

[hebroncougar]

Wonder how that number compares to the rest of baseball history? Higher? Lower?

I can do some looking up tonight, but I hadn't realized it was that high. Think about it, 54 outs in a game, that's 12.6 K's per game (counting both teams)! That alone could be one of the reason's why game times and pitch counts are so up.
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[rotnoid]

1 in 4.28 outs last year was made on a third strike. It's not just the Reds that are K'ing like crazy.

I don't think the stat is implying that they were all K's. Is it possible that outs were made on 2 strike counts (fly outs, ground outs, etc)? Or am I looking at it the wrong way?

[hebroncougar]

I don't think the stat is implying that they were all K's. Is it possible that outs were made on 2 strike counts (fly outs, ground outs, etc)? Or am I looking at it the wrong way?

No, I think it was. I'll reread it tonight to make sure. It was in one of the team sections I was reading in the 2007 edition.

[rotnoid]

No, I think it was. I'll reread it tonight to make sure. It was in one of the team sections I was reading in the 2007 edition.

I could be completely wrong, that just seems really high to me.

[hebroncougar]

I could be completely wrong, that just seems really high to me.

No, it's right. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-31,000 K's a year. (figuring 30 teams at 162 games, and 6.3 K's a game per team). That works out to the approximate league totals I just looked up on baseballreference. I know it's not an exact lookup, as some teams only have 24 outs per game by winning at home, shortened games, etc. but on rough estimates it's a strikout every 4.28 outs. That's atrocious. And I agree, it seemed ridiculously high.

[rotnoid]

No, it's right. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-31,000 K's a year. (figuring 30 teams at 162 games, and 6.3 K's a game per team). That works out to the approximate league totals I just looked up on baseballreference. I know it's not an exact lookup, as some teams only have 24 outs per game by winning at home, shortened games, etc. but on rough estimates it's a strikout every 4.28 outs. That's atrocious. And I agree, it seemed ridiculously high.

Thanks for the clarification. Who says pitching's watered down?

[hebroncougar]

Ok, it was in the Minnesota Twins section of the book, and it was 23.7% of outs are on third strikes.

[M2]

The MLB K/9 has hovered around 6.5 during the 21st century. It's 6.55 this season. Figure 27 outs a game and that works out to a little less than 1/4 of all outs coming by K.

It's up from 1 of every 5 outs 20 and 30 years ago. It went up after the 1993 expansion. Not coincidentally, so did scoring. That's right, more Ks, more runs.

Ks are also more of a necessity in the modern era. The offense is so good that if you can't whiff hitters at better than a 6.0 K/9 clip, you're in for a thrashing.