Who is for real?

[50PoundHead]

I thing those low contact high power guys get completely neutralized against great pitching. Of course great pitching will do that to the majority of hitters but the high contact average power guys have a better profile to work the counts and not look foolish. This to me is a regular season vs. playoff consideration as the pitching in the playoffs is typically of a higher quality.

I think the history of baseball for all eras points in the other direction. When the Orioles were consistently good from the mid-1960s until the early-1980s, Earl Weaver always talked about good starting pitching and Dr. Longball. Same formula worked for the Braves pretty much through their run in the 1990s up until the mid-aughts (and I don't think it was coincidence that Schuerholz started his career in the Orioles' system). Now granted, those Orioles' and Braves' teams had a number of very good all-around hitters, but when one swing of the bat can do what it takes four or five consecutive good ABs to accomplish, you can see why the longview odds are with power. We're not talking about a team full of Gorman Thomases and Rob Deers (or Mike Hessmans). Good pitching shuts down everyone pretty much equally, so you have to capitalize on mistake pitches and power hitters capitalize to a greater extent in the damage they can inflict. What matters for the Braves right now is that they really have only one hitter that I would consider can make the trade-off between power and lack of contact and that's Freeman. Maybe Tucker if he keeps it up. But for everyone else on the team, the payoff for closing their eyes and swinging from the heels just isn't there.

 

[Managuarantano's Volunteers]

I think the history of baseball for all eras points in the other direction. When the Orioles were consistently good from the mid-1960s until the early-1980s, Earl Weaver always talked about good starting pitching and Dr. Longball. Same formula worked for the Braves pretty much through their run in the 1990s up until the mid-aughts (and I don't think it was coincidence that Schuerholz started his career in the Orioles' system). Now granted, those Orioles' and Braves' teams had a number of very good all-around hitters, but when one swing of the bat can do what it takes four or five consecutive good ABs to accomplish, you can see why the longview odds are with power. We're not talking about a team full of Gorman Thomases and Rob Deers (or Mike Hessmans). Good pitching shuts down everyone pretty much equally, so you have to capitalize on mistake pitches and power hitters capitalize to a greater extent in the damage they can inflict. What matters for the Braves right now is that they really have only one hitter that I would consider can make the trade-off between power and lack of contact and that's Freeman. Maybe Tucker if he keeps it up. But for everyone else on the team, the payoff for closing their eyes and swinging from the heels just isn't there.

Albies tho

 

[mfree80]

Back at the beginning of this thread someone said we should prefer Muk over Tucker because of a lower K rate. My question then was about the balance between more power, or fewer K's. After reading the whole thread, it seems that there are some differences of opinion on that question. Power seems to have high value currently, but low K rate also seem to preserve outs.

Interesting discussion. A lot we can learn.

 

[50PoundHead]

Back at the beginning of this thread someone said we should prefer Muk over Tucker because of a lower K rate. My question then was about the balance between more power, or fewer K's. After reading the whole thread, it seems that there are some differences of opinion on that question. Power seems to have high value currently, but low K rate also seem to preserve outs.

Interesting discussion. A lot we can learn.

I think the decision on these two will play out over time. A lot will depend on how much power Tucker will display. Tucker's SLG will likely be higher than Nick's (at least the isoSLG). Nick's OBP will likely be higher. If Tucker can show consistent power and not be a feast-or-famine guy, he may well earn the nod. I still need to be shown that Tucker is for real, however.

 

[Carp]

Markakis also tends to be among league leaders in GIDP every year, which is a stat that can't quite be quantified as to how detrimental it can be to an offense. In 2017, generally the teams that K'd more, hit into significantly less GIDP, and vice versa for teams that K'd less. In fact, the top 5 in each category were either in or very near the bottom 5 in the other.

As far as how those stats translates to runs scored, it's difficult to say. But in 2017, most of the teams in the bottom 10 of runs scored struck out fewer than the rest of the league and also hit into more DP's than the rest of the league. And the top run scoring teams tended to GIDP below the league average mark.

It's just one year, so it could just be noise, but it's something to consider.

 

[50PoundHead]

Markakis also tends to be among league leaders in GIDP every year, which is a stat that can't quite be quantified as to how detrimental it can be to an offense. In 2017, generally the teams that K'd more, hit into significantly less GIDP, and vice versa for teams that K'd less. In fact, the top 5 in each category were either in or very near the bottom 5 in the other.

As far as how those stats translates to runs scored, it's difficult to say. But in 2017, most of the teams in the bottom 10 of runs scored struck out fewer than the rest of the league and also hit into more DP's than the rest of the league. And the top run scoring teams tended to GIDP below the league average mark.

It's just one year, so it could just be noise, but it's something to consider.

You're right. When Nick pounds it into the ground, he's susceptible to the DP. Braves have had a few of those guys with Prado and Simmons having similar profiles. Ideally, Markakis should be lower in the order (6th or 7th), but the Braves lack better options to put ahead of him.

 

[zitothebrave]

The two best offenses in baseball last year had the two lowest strikeout rates.

Ideally you'd have someone who can hit and not strike out a lot. But that being said, we don't have a team full of Chipper Joneses.

Strikeouts aren't good results, but they're not inherently bad either.

Your 2 teams you're citing as the pros to your argument last year were Houston and Cleveland. And you know what, if you can have a player like Altuve or Ramirez who strike out and walk both around 10% and hit for power, that's amazing.

Ideal players are great. Barry Bonds, Chipper Jones, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken. Those types of hitters are amazing. They're also all hall of fame level players. While they're truly amazing to have on your team, you know who else is pretty great? Guys like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Delgado, Torii Hunter, Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Braun. You don't need to be a perfect hitter to still be a really good hitter.

I mean looking at the bottom of last year's K list, I'd love Rendon or Lindor or Ramirez or Altuve. But on the other end of the spectrum can you complain about having Judge, Buxton, or Upton? The most important thing for a hitter to do is get results. A strikeout is limiting because it's less balls in play which means less hits. But if the cost for that is a potential homerun, is that worth it?

 

[thethe]

I've never said strikeouts are a death knell. But it's indisputable that the best offenses last year had low strikeout rates and that theme is continuing this year

 

[nsacpi]

I've never said strikeouts are a death knell. But it's indisputable that the best offenses last year had low strikeout rates and that theme is continuing this year

I think it can be shown that more home runs = a better offense. More walks and OBP = a better offense. And yes less strikeouts = a better offense. A number of things correlate to a better offense.

I also think it is a mistake to focus on one to the exclusion of the others.

Having said that, I think this year's Braves offense is somewhat short in the power department, the early season surprises from Albies and Tucker notwithstanding. So having a low K rate will help to compensate. At the end of the season, I think our run scoring will be average to slightly below average.

Right now we lead the NL in runs scored! But I'm happy to be on that limb saying we'll be average to slightly below average by season's end.

 

[thethe]

I think it can be shown that more home runs = a better offense. More walks and OBP = a better offense. And yes less strikeouts = a better offense. A number of things correlate to a better offense.

I also think it is a mistake to focus on one to the exclusion of the others.

Having said that, I think this year's Braves offense is somewhat short in the power department, the early season surprises from Albies and Tucker notwithstanding. So having a low K rate will help to compensate. At the end of the season, I think our run scoring will be average to slightly below average.

Low strikeouts indicate to me better contact rates. Better contact rates for players with power lead to more homeruns.

Better contact rates also result in spoiling tough pitches which lead to longer ABs that lead to walks.

Everything is related.

 

[thewupk]

I've never said strikeouts are a death knell. But it's indisputable that the best offenses last year had low strikeout rates and that theme is continuing this year

That's certainly not true. The top 10 offenses in baseball were mostly average in the strikeout dept. With some above and below that mark which is expected. Now if you reverse that and look at the top 10 teams with the lowest strikeouts. Most of those are not good offenses.

 

[zitothebrave]

ISO is good. A high walk rate is good.

I focus on strikeout rates early in the season because it is a stat that does not need as big a sample size to indicate something real has changed. But it is not the only way a hitter could improve.

The issue with that is one bad game can drastically skew a K rate.

For example, let's say Freeman is just plain off today and gets 3 Ks in 5 PA. His K rate jumps nearly 3 points. Now one can argue that K-Rate generally is relatively stable, but it does fluctuate. Again, Using Freeman and picking on his last healthy season they went

27.4
23.1
27.9
24.1
21.8
24.4

So generally it's pretty similar through the year, but there are some big blips. I mean heck you can see a big enough first half vs. second half split of 25.2 vs 24.0 I mean from a look at these numbers it doesn't seem that big, because we're dealing with samples of 300+ PA. The issue you run into looking at K rates right now is numerous.

Last year the Astros had the best offense in the league and the lowest K rate at 17.3. In March/April they had a middling offense and a 19.5 K rate. As a team with about a 1000 PA under their belt they were able to shed 2 poitns off their K rate. Nationals did the opposite starting at 19.1 and ending at 21.4

Getting more into the minutia of this. Altuve started the year with a K-rate of 22.5. Gattis with a K rate of 13.8. He finished the season 10 points lower. It's possible to totally turn around a K rate. On the reverse. Nationals started the season really strong and added eventually Michael A. Turner to the roster (was hurt IIRC to start the year) he came in with a huge K rate over 30%. But coupled that with a WAR of 3.2 in 114 games. Providing them with an above average bat and great defense at CF. Then of course just a general uptick as guys like Harper, Wieters, Zimmerman, and Murphy all saw their K rate rise a few points (some harsher than others)

 

[thethe]

That's certainly not true. The top 10 offenses in baseball were mostly average in the strikeout dept. With some above and below that mark which is expected. Now if you reverse that and look at the top 10 teams with the lowest strikeouts. Most of those are not good offenses.

Awful offensive teams like the Braves (low K's) or the Padres (high K's) are irrelevant in this anlaysis. They just had terrible hitters on their team. The contact profile was irrelevant. They were always going to be bad offensive teams. But the players with actual hitting talent on their roster excelled more when those good hitters also did not strike out as much.

Its close to a zero sum game. The best thing for a pitcher is a strikeout. A strikeout is not the worst outcome for a hitter but its damn near close. For some hitters the approach of swinging hard or zeroing in on a pitch/location works. That is not the norm and the best thing will always be to work a pitcher.

When you look at individual hitter performance last year (qualified players) the top 25 in lowest strikeout rate had an average rank of 64 for wRC+. When you look at the lower 25 rank in K% the average wRC+ rank drops to 75.

I agree that strikeout percentage is not the only thing that matters but to act like its not a big factor in the offensive performance in this new age is silly IMO. With starters going less time and now facing more high impact relievers the teams that don't have elevated strikeout numbers will be able to do more damage. The game is always changing and the smart people that are running most organizations are not unwilling to adapt based on the data.

The 90's and early 2000's are long gone and the way we think about the game always evolves.

 

[zitothebrave]

I've never said strikeouts are a death knell. But it's indisputable that the best offenses last year had low strikeout rates and that theme is continuing this year

That's not really true. Cleveland and Boston that's true, but where to the next 3 in the top 5 of lowest Ks go?

Braves - 25th
Redsox - 22nd
Royals 23rd.

Now this is hardly the right way to do this, but I really don't care. The mean rating of those 5 teams is 14.8. Again it's not right because Cleveland was so damned good. But I'm not here to do advanced math and shizz.

On the bottom 5 in K's this is where their offenses rank

Brewers 20
Padres 29
Rays 13
Rangers 18
A's 7th

Their mean is 17.4

Not a massive difference. The "issue" is that there is a team in the Padres who just flat out sucked offensively pulling down the Ks and a team in the Astros who just flat out rocked keeping up the low Ks.

Now the more "correct' way to look at this is look at the top 10 teams in offense and see where they track on K rates

Astros - 1st
Yankees - 18th
Indians - 2nd
Dodgers - 19th
Mariners - 10th
Twins - 15th
A's - 26th
Cubs - 20th
Nationals - 13th
Cardinals - 17th

If you were to chart that with a graph you'd see outliers are clearly the Astros and Indians with the A's being their counter balance. Most teams who're good offensively are around middle of the pack in K rate.

If you divide them into 3rds

top third in K rate would be Astros, Indians and Mariners. Second third would be Yankees, Dodgers, Twins, nationals, Cubs, and Cardinals and the final would be A's.

So yeah, generally speaking striking out a lot is bad. But it's not the end of the world.

Now let's look at a different season. 2016 and the 5 lowest K rates and where they rank on the overall offense

Angels - 10th
Giants - 16th
Red Sox - 1st
A's - 27th
Yankees - 23rd

And for one more 2015
Royals - 10th
A's -19th
Braves - 30th
Red Sox - 9th
Jays - 1st

There is no pure correlation. There certainly is no causation between strikouts and good offense. There is risk in a High K player, and that risk is they have minimal room for error. They must hit the ball really hard and with enough frequency that their average doesn't tank.

 

[thethe]

But that is all I'm saying Zito. I've never said its the end all. But the teams/players that restrict their K's are on average more productive offensive players. You can still strike out a lot a be a great offensive player. I just think you are more susceptible to falling off of a cliff and fast.

 

[zitothebrave]

But that is all I'm saying Zito. I've never said its the end all. But the teams/players that restrict their K's are on average more productive offensive players. You can still strike out a lot a be a great offensive player. I just think you are more susceptible to falling off of a cliff and fast.

I wish there was a better way to chart this. My brain isn't fully functioning or I'd maybe figure it out. I'm guessing correlation between runs created and K rate is minimal though. Generally speaking a better indicator to offensive success is BB rate. Again teams are outliers (astros again) but the top 10 in BB rate features only 3 teams below 100 wRC+ and the bottom 10 features only 2 teams above 100 wRC+. iso as well is a better indicator. Top 10 teams in iso only 2 are below 100 wRC+ bottom 10 teams 0 meet the 100 or above criteria. Generally speaking BB rate and Power are your best stats to look at for predicting offensive value. Not perfect because there can be outliers in each (astros didn't walk a lot but struck out the least and had the most power, which is an incredibly rare combo) and looking back at 2016 but lowering the standard because the league had less lows that year or something that caused the wRC+ to be much lower for most teams you see in the top 10 in BB rate 1 team below 95wRC+ and in the bottom 10 3 teams above it and in the top 10 in iso 1 team below it and 4 teams above it. Which IMO is much more correlatory than K rate.

 

[nsacpi]

There have been a couple assertions about high strikeout hitters (that they do relatively worse against elite pitchers and that they are more prone to fall off a cliff) that are interesting but as far as I know not proven. Anyone care to cite any studies/evidence for this?

Is Gattis a high strikeout hitter? I loved watching hit against Strasburg. Is Strasburg an elite pitcher? I know I am in the realm of anecdotes here. But until someone can show me better evidence otherwise, I will leave this out there.

 

[thethe]

There have been a couple assertions about high strikeout hitters (that they do relatively worse against elite pitchers and that they are more prone to fall off a cliff) that are interesting but as far as I know not proven. Anyone care to cite any studies/evidence for this?

Is Gattis a high strikeout hitter? I loved watching hit against Strasburg. Is Strasburg an elite pitcher? I know I am in the realm of anecdotes here. But until someone can show me better evidence otherwise, I will leave this out there.

Not sure if the data is extractable into a spreadsheet format but you would need to pick a sample of matchups for high strikeout pitchers.

Then take a look at those hitters K rates vs. league average k rates for pitchers. Does hte hitters K rates increase (or maybe decrease) at a rate that is higher/lower than the increase in strikeout rate from that sampled pitcher to league average?

Its not a copmlete analysis but I think thats a rough way of seeing if this hypothesis is true.

 

[50PoundHead]

Ideally you'd have someone who can hit and not strike out a lot. But that being said, we don't have a team full of Chipper Joneses.

Strikeouts aren't good results, but they're not inherently bad either.

Your 2 teams you're citing as the pros to your argument last year were Houston and Cleveland. And you know what, if you can have a player like Altuve or Ramirez who strike out and walk both around 10% and hit for power, that's amazing.

Ideal players are great. Barry Bonds, Chipper Jones, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken. Those types of hitters are amazing. They're also all hall of fame level players. While they're truly amazing to have on your team, you know who else is pretty great? Guys like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Delgado, Torii Hunter, Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Braun. You don't need to be a perfect hitter to still be a really good hitter.

I mean looking at the bottom of last year's K list, I'd love Rendon or Lindor or Ramirez or Altuve. But on the other end of the spectrum can you complain about having Judge, Buxton, or Upton? The most important thing for a hitter to do is get results. A strikeout is limiting because it's less balls in play which means less hits. But if the cost for that is a potential homerun, is that worth it?

Depends on which Upton you are talking about.

You've summed it up here. Like I said earlier, it all boils down to risk/reward. Strikeouts aren't necessarily bad for guys like Judge or Upton (debatable with guys like Buxton) because when they make solid contact, chances of an extra base hit are fairly high. It's not like these guys are hitting .200. Even guys like Mark Reynolds (in his prime) can be valuable with extremely high strikeout rates. I don't think a team full of them is a great idea (again, my "mix" mantra), but you can slot a few high-K power guys in and it likely helps your offense.

 

[zitothebrave]

There have been a couple assertions about high strikeout hitters (that they do relatively worse against elite pitchers and that they are more prone to fall off a cliff) that are interesting but as far as I know not proven. Anyone care to cite any studies/evidence for this?

Is Gattis a high strikeout hitter? I loved watching hit against Strasburg. Is Strasburg an elite pitcher? I know I am in the realm of anecdotes here. But until someone can show me better evidence otherwise, I will leave this out there.

Well it's hard to classify vs. Elite. If we look at some other comps we can see that Judge for example does better vs. Finnesse or inbetween pitchers (aka what most pitchers in baseball are) than he ddoes vs. power. That being said his samples are small.

Let's look at someone more established. Chris Davis for example. He did much better as the MPH went down. Same is true of the big man with no plan Adam Dunn. Same is true with Ryan Howard. Same is generally true with Stanton. But it's worth noting, in 2017 the league splits for the same categories are largely the same. So the issue is that you'd have to run a really deep stat check to find things out. On a quick counter check the guy in the similar parameters to them who struck out the least was Juan Pierre did better vs. Power pitchers, but Juan Pierre did so poorly in general it's hard to compare. Looking at someone who could actually hit and had a low K rate and you get Pedroia who lived in the extremes. Better vs. Power and Finesse than vs. inbetweeners. vs. Power pitchers his power numbers were up a smidge and his walk numbers were up a ton and vs. finesse pitchers he got a higher average.

I honestly don't think there's a massive correlation. I think overall Power hitters do struggle vs. Power pitchers because they have powerful swings. But when they connect it's something special.