Strikeouts in Baseball

There was a really good article in the Wall Street Journal on March 29^th titled “Baseball 2013: Here Come the Flamethrowers (chances are the link will work only for WSJ subscribers, however, if you copy and paste the title, you just might be able to read it. Be sure to NOT mention my name). One of the main points was the increase in strikeouts (the article stated an 18.3% increase since 2003). I’ll expand on some of that discussion with some historical charts. Unless otherwise stated, all information is generated from baseball-reference.com. This first chart shows the incidence of strikeouts and walks from 1901-2012:

It’s pretty interesting how in lockstep walks and strikeouts were until 1950, at which time a very distinct divergence began that hasn’t stopped since. Up until 1950, both walks AND strikeouts were increasing, but walks began to decrease and strikeouts, after ebbing and flowing, have begun a steady upward trend since around 1980. Smarter people than me can probably explain why:

1. New ballparks which emphasized hitting, but that didn’t really begin until 1970 or so

2. Expansion, but that started slowly in the early 60s, and most expansion effects only last a year or so (or so said Bill James)

3. Changes in strategy to emphasize hitting

4. The mini Dead Ball Era of approximately 1962-1968

There’s probably more, but the strikeout is here to stay. I would question whether these strikeouts are “bad” in the manner that old baseball purists (i.e., anyone who played baseball prior to today’s players) believe. I’m not sure that is so cut-and-dried.

I show this next chart for illustration only—it’s the historical trends for batting average, on-base percentage, slugging and batting average on balls in play (BABIP):

There is a slow but steady rise in BABIP from approximately .270 in 1950 to around .300 today, an increase of over 10%. Of course, this doesn’t factor in strikeouts, so increases in strikeouts won’t affect it, but it does show the value of putting a ball in play. This is what the old-time baseball player would say—“Put it in play and see what happens.” Generally speaking, I would agree with this approach, but something else has happened that will be apparent when the BABIP and OBP lines are taken away:

These are the differences between hitter’s OBP and batting average and slugging and batting average. Historically, the average player has an OBP about 60-70 points higher than his batting average. The .270 hitter would have an OBP of around .330-.340, and variations in one direction or the other were noteworthy. This has remained remarkably unchanged in over 100 years of baseball history, which is stunning. The other line, the difference between the slugging percent and batting average, begins to shed light as to why strikeouts are more common these days—quite simply, the payoff is greater. The difference in slugging percent, or in other words, the value of the balls hit (more extra-base hits than singles), while down from its (performance-enhanced) peak of 2000, is still near historical highs.

One of the take-home points from the Wall Street Journal article was that power pitching is becoming more prevalent and that teams are willing to pay for it. This very well could be true, since runs per game are down and have been going down for the past five years:

But is it the power pitching or the increase in strikeouts that is causing this decrease? Or is it a reflection of the cleaning out of the performance-enhanced hitting? It’s probably both, as well as other factors—the danger is to over-emphasize one.

Mariano Rivera-Pretty Good!

The written word does a poor job of relaying sarcasm, so I hope the title of this post effectively conveys that I use that title facetiously, since Mariano Rivera isn't just pretty good--he's the best closer of all time, and my point with this post is to show just how totally dominating he was, and how it will be nearly impossible to duplicate, or in my opinion, even come close.

I won't speak for others, but I audibly gasped when I heard the news about Rivera, because at his age, one doesn't just rehab and come back from a torn ACL. It would be difficult enough for someone significantly younger than he is, but he'll be the ultimate determinant of whether he can come back. I'll demonstrate using three tables, with the first the top 25 in saves all-time. Of these top 25, I'll rank them by career Wins Above Replacement Player (be sure to click the link above for a fuller description)--all numbers are through the 2011 season and only include the regular season:

It would appear that my thesis is blown right at the start, since Dennis Eckersley is shown as having the highest career WAR for a reliever. Of course, this is deceptive, and by my count, Eckersley's WAR as a reliever is 16.6 (I start at 1987). As such, 42.1 points of Eckersley's career WAR was accumulated as a starting pitcher. We can show that with the next table, which shows the WAR by game pitched (the exact equation is WAR/G*1000, since I don't like numbers with small decimals--the best way to describe this would be WAR/1,000 games pitched):

I've added the column WAR/G to the far right, but it doesn't shake things up much--Eckersley is still in the lead, but again, only about 28% of his career WAR can be attributed to his skills as a closer. We can correct for this by viewing a third chart, my favorite way to look at any player, which is WAR/Inning Pitched or, for hitters, WAR/Plate Appearance. This allows us to see how well they performed as opposed to career stats that typically only tell us how LONG they performed. In addition, it becomes a useful tool to see how current players stack up with the all-time greats, as will be apparent:

The greatness of Mariano Rivera becomes obvious when we look at it this way. This is calculated as WAR/IP*1000 and shows how dominant he was. It also gives us an idea of how outstanding F-Rod has been as well in his career and moves Eckersley down the list. I'm not stating this is the best or only way to effectively measure Rivera, but when the gap between #1 and #2 on any list is around 30%, a solid argument can be made that the person at the top was not only good, but good by a comfortable stretch, and unlikely to be equaled in the foreseeable future. It should also be noted that numbers 1 and 2 in saves (Rivera and Hoffman) are also numbers 1 and 2 in save percentage, which I think is remarkable. Like every other baseball fan, I hope he can return, but if he doesn't, he has nothing to worry about regarding his status as the best closer in baseball history. I don't think this was in doubt--what I'm not sure is how many people realized the magnitude of his dominance.