Strikeouts are killing baseball

Gotcha. I figured there was a more "inside baseball" explanation than just "BLAME THE PITCHERS FOR PITCHING!"

 

What LTL said. It's not bad hitting. It's actually seen as more efficient hitting, going for the big payoff instead of trying to nickel-and-dime the way to runs.

Think about it like this: Before, teams were trying to accumulate runs by betting the favorites to place or show each race. Now, they are gunning for exactas, trifectas, and undervalued long shots. They may lose more frequently, but they come out ahead overall.

And I agree with the premise, largely. Baseball is boring, especially on TV, when the ball is never ... in ... play.

 

The trend in baseball seems to be the either/or option of the strikeout or the solo home run. Power v. power with the bases empty. And then not much else a lot of times beyond that.

Saturday, the Rays, Padres, Orioles, D-Backs, Tigers, Reds and Giants hit a combined 17 home runs. They scored a grand total of 21 runs and went a combined 2-5 for the day.

 

I think the power vs. power effect has a lot to do with it. It's baseball's version of men's tennis, where there aren't any rallies anymore because it's just hard serves and failed returns.

There is also a systemic issue at play, I'd argue. I've watched a lot of Class-A ball this season for a story I'm doing, and watching scouts work that level: All they care about with a pitcher is velocity, and all they care about with a hitter is power. Gaudy power numbers are what get you noticed, so of course a young player who's trying to make it is going to try to bump those numbers. I know it's A-ball and you're going to see some bad things, but some of the baseball is so dumb. It makes me wonder if someone like Greg Maddux—who said his version of a perfect game was 27 ground-ball outs—would even make it today.

There's one young player I've been watching closely, and I straight-up loath the way he plays baseball. He's the proverbial hammer who sees everything as a nail. He's Rob Deer without the subtlety. But the scouts love him.

 

Your point is well-taken, but isn't that Kyle Hendricks, kind of? But maybe he's the exception that proves the rule. Scouts and organizations are definitely obsessed with velocity.

Maddux had better stuff than his reputation, of course. But what's really funny is to look back at some of the guys who think of as dominant strikeout pitchers of their time. Bob Gibson's best single-season strikeout rate was in 1968: 23.1%. Hendricks last season, known as a finesse artist who can't possibly keep this up, struck out batters at a 22.8% clip.

 

Maddux always had much better velocity than he gets credit for, so he would have made it through. But the proverbial Madduxesque pitcher has little chance. Even at the high school level, coaches bring the radar gun out at their own tryouts.

 

Stud catchers like Pudge Rodriguez did more to shut that down in the 1990s than anything else.

Well, that, plus everyone started bulking up like Charles Atlas and playing station to station ball.

 

But enough about Kyle Schwarber.

 

I don't know how you'd do it, but it would be a cool exercise to take a group of scouts, strip them of their radar guns, and show them five pitchers they've never seen before. Ask them to rank them. And see if the hardest thrower ends up on top.

 

I'd love to see those numbers broken down by time through the order. Guessing Gibson's percentages would be quite a bit higher the first 2-3 times he saw someone in a game, which is of course all today's starters do. Also, pitching was a lot different when you knew the expectation was to go nine and anything short of that was letting your team down.

 

I'm suspicious of any baseball player who played football at any point in his life, so yes.

 

One thing that might take a few years but could change the equation is the injury research. All indications so far are that velocity = blowouts. Aren't teams going to wise up and decide that Strasburg or Harvey throwing 94 mph for their entire careers is better than the same guys throwing 98-100 mph and costing themselves in the middle of that career and at the end?

I don't think it will change much in the bullpen, where there is an endless supply of pitchers throughout the world. But I do think we're going to see some pretty emphatic recommendations against rolling a guy out there to go for triple digits 60 times a game.