Baseball’s Epidemic Of Strikeouts Continues To Spread

From 2001 through 2005 there were 8 NL teams that had more than 1200 SO in a season. From 2006 through 2011, the AL got involved and there were 48 teams that met that criterion. In 2012 through 2015 that number increased to a total of 75 teams; with 2015 setting a new high of 21 teams. In 2007, for the first time in History, with or without the DH, one team in the AL struck out over 1300 times, while the last four years that number jumped to 15, including the one team that exceeded 1400.

For those first five years the AL averaged 787 Runs, an On Base Percentage (OBP) of .333 and 1012 SO. Over the next six years Runs were 776, OBP .333, and SO 1071. The last four years saw a reduction to 703 Runs, and an OBP .319, after an increase in SO to 1211.

In the NL, those numbers for the corresponding years were 740 Runs, an OBP of .331 and 1078 SO. Then, Runs were 726, OBP .329, and SO 1138. Finally, Runs were reduced to 660, OBP .315, as SO increased to 1255. In 2013, AL teams with the DH averaged only 3 fewer SO than a NL team.

In 2016 a new record for the most SO in MLB History will be reached, as 25 teams of the 30 teams are on pace to have 1200+ SO. The question to be asked is, “What is the effect of all these SO on the quality of the Game?”

Hall of Famer (HOF), Branch Rickey, who was considered “The Brain” of baseball in his time, integrated baseball in 1947, when he brought Jackie Robinson into the NL with the Brooklyn Dodgers. As General Manager (GM), he led the St. Louis Cardinals to six NL pennants, the Dodgers to two, and was the GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954 when he unveiled his statistical formula in LIFE magazine “… that statistically disproves cherished myths and demonstrates what really wins,” Titled, “GOODBY TO SOME OLD BASEBALL IDEAS,” to determine the most important factors which contribute to winning and losing baseball games. Rickey colluded with Allan Roth the Dodger’s statistician that he considered, “… the top statistical specialist in baseball.” After gathering and studying statistics gathered from both major leagues for the 20-year period of 1934 to 1953 they became overwhelmed and took the figures to mathematicians at a famous research institute to process. When considering hitting, he was concerned about the desire for everyone to hit home runs and neglect the other aspects necessary to produce a winning team, especially OBP.

In his formula, he called OBP, On Base Average (OBA) a calculation of a hitter’s proficiency that was missing from the statistical analysis considered at that time. There was very little notice of his claims that, “This is a far more significant figure than just batting average alone. The virtue of this approach is that it gives a positive evaluation to walks. I would rate it about 75% of a base hit – because a base on balls can never advance a runner more than one base and cannot advance him at all unless there is a runner on first. The correlation showed that OBA went hand in glove with runs scored. When one was high for a team, so was the other.”

Rickey realized the importance of OBP long before the rest of us even considered its existence, but made no reference to SO in the offensive side of his formula and devalued them on the defensive side. That was probably because both leagues averaged a very consistent 3.61 SO per game and an OBP of .336 over the 20-year period they studied. (3.61 SO X 162 games = 585 per year) There was no evidence that SO had an effect on OBP, because they both stayed at the same level for the period studied. He concluded that, “I was forced to admit, and I did so grudgingly, that strikeouts contributed nothing more to the end result than pop fouls caught by the catcher. After all, they were just another means of getting men out.”

Mr. Rickey would now have to admit that SO have so dramatically increased that they can no longer be compared to pop fouls caught by a catcher. All outs are not the same. Rickey noted why hits are more valuable than walks and, by the same token, SO are worse than other outs because they have absolutely no potential positive value and it can now be shown that, at a certain level, a very definite negative value.

His conclusion that Runs followed OBP was valid, and we can now conclude that OBP has followed the epidemic of SO, resulting in the scoring of fewer Runs. Strikeouts really matter!

https://youtu.be/C0qBiUlsIh4