JT Volpe
The 2014 Atlanta Braves had a disappointing season. Finishing 79-83, the Braves finished well behind the Washington Nationals in the NL East race. For a franchise that dominated a division for almost the entire 90's and early 2000's this recent lack of success was unacceptable. The Braves front office tried to fix what they felt was a huge problem. The offense struck out 1,369 times, good for 22.6% of their at-bats. Consequently, they sent strikeout magnet Jason Heyward to the Cardinals to bring in Shelby Miller as a nice compliment to their starting rotation. Also Nick Markakis and Johnny Gomes came to town as free agents. The results show that the strikeout problem was solved! Atlanta is only striking out to the tune of 18.4% as of this writing. The question is, did fixing strikeouts fix the Braves?
Well. Somehow despite the contrasting offseasons of the two clubs, the Braves are only two games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies. One team made major moves, acquired talent and identified needs. The other thought it best to trot out Jerome Williams once a week. And yet here we are. Despite not striking out, the Braves also don't score. Their abysmal offense led to their recent 3-27 stretch. Now obviously baseball is too complex a game for me to boldly proclaim MORE STRIKEOUTS = MORE WINS!! One, because that's ridiculous and two, because the Toronto Blue Jays have the exact same K% as Atlanta and 80 wins to go with it. But if the Jays and Braves contrast each other to the point that its hard to make a correlation, is there ANY correlation? Here's each team's K% in comparison to their Win%.
| TEAM | K% | WIN% |
|---|---|---|
| Cubs | 24.5 | .586 |
| Astros | 23.4 | .539 |
| Orioles | 22.4 | .486 |
| Padres | 21.9 | .475 |
| Mariners | 21.7 | .482 |
| Nationals | 21.7 | .507 |
| Rays | 21.4 | .493 |
| Twins | 21.2 | .521 |
| Rockies | 20.9 | .414 |
| Pirates | 20.8 | .600 |
| Diamondbacks | 20.8 | .479 |
| Brewers | 20.8 | .440 |
| Mets | 20.8 | .567 |
| Dodgers | 20.7 | .576 |
| Cardinals | 20.4 | .629 |
| Phillies | 20.4 | .380 |
| White Sox | 20.3 | .475 |
| Tigers | 20.3 | .457 |
| Rangers | 20.3 | .529 |
| Yankees | 19.5 | .554 |
| Reds | 19.5 | .417 |
| Marlins | 19.4 | .426 |
| Angels | 19.3 | .507 |
| Indians | 18.7 | .496 |
| Giants | 18.5 | .514 |
| Braves | 18.4 | .394 |
| Blue Jays | 18.4 | .571 |
| Red Sox | 17.8 | .471 |
| Athletics | 17.8 | .426 |
| Royals | 15.2 | .593 |
To illustrate this further here's a graph of the two stats:
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As you can see the relationship is hardly indicative of any strong trend. In fact the line of best fit shows that more strikeouts does translate to more wins, though the positive correlation is so loose its not worth considering. The yellow points are the clubs currently qualified for the 2015 MLB Playoffs. As you can see the Royals and Cubs, who have the lowest and highest K% respectively, are in. Also in are the Astros and their 2nd highest K% and the Blue Jays tied for 5th lowest. The Cards, Bucs, Dodgers and Mets are all grouped around the league median.
The fact is strikeouts are outs. Most teams make 27 every game. The argument for why striking out is bad is that you aren't putting the ball in play and if you aren't hitting the ball you won't get hits. This is true, just look at the Royals who put almost every strike in play with contact and reach base often. But the downside of higher contact is that you can make extra outs by hitting into double plays. Or, if you're like the Braves, you put the ball in play but with so little power that you have a lower BABIP, and can't score runs with home runs. So building a team around players that don't strike out isn't the full story. Consider this list of MVP candidates for this season.
| Player | WAR | K% |
|---|---|---|
| Bryce Harper | 8.6 | 20 |
| Josh Donaldson | 7.9 | 18.5 |
| Mike Trout | 6.9 | 23.5 |
| Joey Votto | 6.8 | 18.5 |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 6.7 | 23.5 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 6 | 21.4 |
| Manny Machado | 5.6 | 15.4 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 5.5 | 18.7 |
Another pretty wide range of strikeout rates here. But whiffing clearly doesn't tell the full story because all of these guys can hit. And who has the lowest K% in all of baseball? Daniel Murphy and his pedestrian 1.3 WAR. Then there's Chris Davis who strikes out in a mind-boggling 31.9% of his plate appearances. But his WAR is 4.1, which the Orioles don't mind having in the lineup. Kris Bryant provides even more value at a 5.1 WAR even though he goes out on strikes in 30.5% of his trips to the box.
In my opinion strikeouts are a stat as overrated as ice hockey's +/- metric. Phillies fans will tell you all the time how Ryan Howard strikes out too much! But let's be honest, we didn't care when he was hitting 58 home runs. The amount of times or frequency with which a player or team strikes out is a really easy thing to throw out there if you want to analyze why someone is struggling. But a deeper look at the statistics seems to show its mostly frivolous. Bad hitters are bad because they don't get hits, whether the ball is in the catcher's glove or being thrown to the first baseman is of little consequence.
I'm not saying the Braves front office had a Moneyball type offseason where they looked at nothing but K% and got every guy who doesn't strikeout often. I wasn't there in the room, maybe K% had exactly zero to do with their moves. But the Braves are the perfect example of why strikeouts are given far too much weight in player analysis. I could care less that Nelson Cruz strikes out in almost a quarter of his at-bats and I'm willing to bet most GM's would find a way to forgive him if he was hitting .312 for their club. And any Astros fan would trade Carlos Correa striking out in literally every remaining at bat for the rest of the season if it meant they would hold off the Rangers and win the AL West this season, which would be the franchises first playoff appearance since they were an NL Wild Card team in 2005.
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