You're actually doing exactly what I accused you of in my initial post, ironically enough. You're trying to analyze seasons based on K rates. Very accurate mathematical analysis has shown repeatedly that the actual cost of a strikeout vs. a groundout or a flyout is extremely, extremely small. With 1 out and a runner on 1st, a strikeout is a little better than an out in play. With 1 out and a runner on 2nd or 3rd it's a little bit worse. With 2 outs it never matters. With the bases empty it never matters. It averages out to being pretty even. If you're going to look at how good a player's season was, you can ignore strikeouts.
If you want to get better, though, it helps to cut down on your strikeouts. Not because of the absurdly marginal bump in value you might provide by moving a few runners over and grounding into a few more DPs. It's because the balls you don't K on turn into hits, or at least some of them do. Trout's career BABIP is .361. He K'd an extra 48 times last year as opposed to 2013, in slightly fewer PAs. Take 50 strikeouts away, have those balls go into play, and even if none of them are HR, he averages 18 more hits. That's 30 points of batting average, and at least 30 points of slugging, and 25 points of OBP. So bare minimum, no XBH, it's 55 points of OPS. That's pretty significant.
It's fair to look at a player and say that if he cut his strikeout rate, he could probably be better than he was. But you can't look at an individual season and try to claim that it's worse than it was because of high K rates, or better because of low K rates. Those are dramatically different things.