Posted by burnsy483 on 3/3/2015 10:42:00 AM (view original):
Posted by bad_luck on 3/3/2015 10:22:00 AM (view original):
Posted by burnsy483 on 3/3/2015 10:11:00 AM (view original):
Posted by bad_luck on 3/3/2015 10:09:00 AM (view original):
You have to do it for individual teams.
Why do we see the correlation for the league, as a whole, but not individual teams?
Sample size. There's too much going on to attribute a downturn in scoring to one variable when you're only looking at 20 examples. Looking at every team season since 1920 produces a coefficuent of 0.06. OBP correlates at 0.80. I have a hard time believing that something changed so drastically that suddenly strikeouts correlate to run scoring better than the historic OBP correlation.
Maybe it's something along these lines. Team A scores 4.5 runs per game and Ks 1200 times a year, and Team B scores 4.3 runs per game and Ks 1000 times a year. With a different mindset of "be more free-swinging, Ks are ok," Team A scores 4.4 runs per game and Ks 1400 times, and Team B scores 4.2 runs per game and Ks 1200 times.
I think it's possible that everyone is right, in some sense. Outs are outs over the course of a season. A strikeout isn't worse than the average out(s) in play. (tec would still be wrong when he argues otherwise) But it's possible that players are being a little too loose in their atbats now, thinking that "strikeouts are just another out" means "strikeouts are ok" which would be the equivalent of "outs are ok."
Personally, I think pitchers have just gotten a lot better. Think about it - if the average hit percentage on a ball in play is 30%, whether it's 1994 or 2014 (I'm assuming that hasn't changed much) and pitchers are better, and throw more difficult pitches to hit. If there's a higher percentage of "unhittable" pitches, there are less pitches to put in play, therefore, Ks go up overall, across the board. So, if you took this current crop of hitters, and put them back in the 1990s, their strikeouts would drop as a whole. Pitchers are improving at a faster rate than hitters.
FINALLY! A post that has some semblance of understanding.
Plate discipline as a whole has declined drastically over the years. Hitters have been transforming from approaching their AB's situationally (based on score, game situation, count, etc.) to the idea of free swinging, grip it and rip it, and hope for the best. Not everybody, but that seems to be the mindset as a whole. And that's combined with a "strikeouts are not that bad a thing" mentality that didn't really used to be a part of the game. That's the Kool Aid that BL seems to be drinking.
And I'm not sure that pitchers today have gotten a lot better. I think a big part of the pitching mindset today is to throw harder. There are more pitchers who tend to throw mid-high 90's in the game today than ever before. Why is that? I think part of it is the way the game has been managed over the past 25 years or so (I blame LaRussa). Starting pitchers are no longer expected to go 7 or 8 or 9 innings anymore. They're only expected to go 6. So, not having to throttle back to pace themselves over more innings per outing, they throw harder over 6 innings. And then the bullpen takes over. And unlike the "old" days when relievers would go multiple innings, now you have your seventh inning guy, your eighth inning guy, and your ninth inning closer. All of whom tend to throw harder because they know they're only going one inning.
So a combination of hitters mentality (swing harder, strikeouts are no big deal) and pitcher's mentality (throw harder, try to blow the batter away, I'm only pitching "x" innings) lead to more and more strikeouts, and as we are seeing, fewer runs.
3/3/2015 10:58 AM (edited)