I was listening to Norm Hitzges' show on the Ticket earlier today, and he was arguing that strikeouts by a hitter in baseball are really not a big deal. Basically, his argument came down to this list of the top strikeout guys in the league right now. If the player has a * next to his name, it means he was on the 2009 all-star team. The number to the left is how many times they've struck out.

125 Mark Reynolds, AZ
*119 Carlos Pena, TB
114 Chris Davis, Texas
*107 Ryan Howard, Phil
105 Adam Dunn, Wash
103 BJ Upton, TB
99 Russell Branyan, Sea
96 Jack Cust, Oak
*93 Jason Bay, Bos
*93 Justin Upton, AZ
92 Shin-Soo Choo, Cle
*92 David Wright, NYM
*89 Brandon Inge, Det

Out of those 13 players, 6 were on the all-star team. And the others have been productive players, maybe with the exception of Chris Davis, whose low batting average and on-base percentage off-set his good power numbers.

After listening to Norm's segment, I wanted to take it a step further. Does NOT striking out help or hurt a batter? I looked at the strikeout stats on mlb.com. They list only total strikeouts, not strikeouts per at bat or plate appearance. So let's do it this way - the top 12 strikeout guys (excluding Chris Davis, now in the minors) average 328 at bats, and all have at least 300 at bats. Let's look at the guys who strike out the fewest amount of times AND have at least 300 at bats, to see whether they are productive hitters (all-stars indicated by *). Feel free to look just at the names first and the numbers later, because there are a lot of numbers:

57 Jason Kubel, Min (I wanted to include him, despite only 282 at bats, because he's batting .319 with 16 HR and 52 RBI)
57 Matt Holliday, Oak (.284 BA, .376 OBP, 11 HR, 53 RBI)
58 Kendry Morales, LAA (.291 BA, .349 OBP, 17 HR, 52 RBI)
*58 Chone Figgins, LAA (.310 BA, .395 OBP, 72 runs, 27 SB)
*59 Michael Young, Texas (.311 BA, .365 OBP, 12 HR, 38 RBI)
59 Nyjer Morgan, Wash (.289 BA, .354 OBP, 49 runs, 38 SB)
59 Nate McLouth, Atl (.257 BA, .342 OBP, 14 HR, 50 RBI)
59 Nick Markakis, Balt (.291 BA, .342 OBP, 29 doubles, 60 RBI)
59 Felipe Lopez, Min (.309 BA, .372 OBP, 108 hits)
59 Billy Butler, KC (.294 BA, .346 OBP, 8 HR, 38 RBI)
*60 Aaron Hill, Tor (.284 BA, .323 OBP, 20 HR, 60 RBI)
60 Lance Berkman, Hou (I'm rounding up for him - 296 at bats. .270 BA, .405 OBP, 18 HR, 55 RBI)

Some pretty good players in that group, but only 3 all-stars this season. And those are roughly the 12 best players at not striking out.

I'm really not hypothesizing anything, I was writing this blog while I looked up those stats. But it is interesting that the number of times a batter strikes out seems to be inversely proportional to his all-star calibur (at least for this year).

My theory is that if players like Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn made a concerted effort to lower their strikeout totals, they could do it, but they would sacrifice power. If they started choking up with two strikes (like we were all taught in little league), they might do a better job of making contact, but would likely lose a lot of what makes them powerful, productive hitters.

That was a lot of numbers up there, so I apologize for giving you tired-head, but these are the kinds of things I find interesting. And if you made it this far, I'm guessing you do too.

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