Fact: Yet he did strike out less often.
Fact: And his production went up!!

Weird, huh?

Maybe.  But arguably the best player in baseball said "I need to cut down on strikeouts" and he did.     You initially declare it just luck and now you're stating that he's just saying dumb **** in order to get reporters to go away. 

You know that makes very little sense.

Just luck would be the Pirates dragging me/you out of the stands to face Kershaw.   We boldly state we're going to rip one down the RF line for a double.  And we do.  Then we say "Oh yeah, I've been watching film and I knew he'd try to slip a backdoor curve by me.  I was waiting on it."

When the most talented player in baseball says he's going to work on something, and does what he says, I'm taking his word on it.   Not some internet assclown expert declaring he was just lucky and mumbled some dumb **** in ST to get reporters to leave him alone.

Posted by tecwrg on 11/5/2015 6:27:00 AM (view original):
Fact: Yet he did strike out less often.
Fact: And his production went up!!

Weird, huh?

So, you're saying that he struck out less and replaced those strikeouts with non-outs?

Posted by bad_luck on 2/25/2015 3:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 2/25/2015 3:16:00 PM (view original):
. . . . wants to cut down on his strikeouts.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/story/_/id/12381485/mike-trout-los-angeles-angels-ready-erase-bad-aftertaste-2014-playoff-disappointment

Perhaps BL needs to have a sit-down with MT and tell him how strikeouts for hitters are not so big deal.  Because, you know, an out is an out.

Outs are outs. Pretty sure Trout's goal isn't to trade those strikeouts for ground outs.

This.

Posted by bad_luck on 11/4/2015 7:48:00 PM (view original):
He actually put more balls in play in 2014 (392) than he did in 2015 (381).

You're saying here that he put fewer balls in play in 2015 than he did in 2014.  Yet he cut down on his strikeouts, and his production went up.

Perhaps whatever he did to cut down on his strikeouts was not as disastrous as you were predicting.  In fact, perhaps, it made him a better player.

Posted by tecwrg on 11/5/2015 12:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 11/4/2015 7:48:00 PM (view original):
He actually put more balls in play in 2014 (392) than he did in 2015 (381).

You're saying here that he put fewer balls in play in 2015 than he did in 2014.  Yet he cut down on his strikeouts, and his production went up.

Perhaps whatever he did to cut down on his strikeouts was not as disastrous as you were predicting.  In fact, perhaps, it made him a better player.

It's a fact. He put less balls in play in 2015. 

His production went up. Yes. His out rate went down and his power went up.

Please see this: https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?ForumID=1&TopicID=483775&ThreadID=10657860#l_10657860

Quote post by bad_luck on 2/25/2015 3:30:00 PM:

 

Tec, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what "an out is an out" means.

All hitters make outs. How they made those outs doesn't matter. How often they make them does. You're looking at Trout and saying, "see, his K rate went down and his OBP went up."

No ****.

He made outs less frequently.

He didn't put more balls in play and OBP/SLG isn't a measurement for "productive" outs. Like I said from the start, Trout wasn't trying to trade his K's for other types of outs. He was trying to avoid outs.

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/25/2015 8:09:00 PM (view original):
What I'd be worried about, as his manager or an Angels fan, is how he's planning to approach cutting down his strikeouts.  Any method of doing that has definite downside.  I mean, the options are pretty much:

A) Don't swing as hard with 2 strikes - obvious down side from a guy averaging over 70 XBH a season.
B) Swing at more borderline pitches - what guys like Dunn would have needed to do, but you risk lowering your success on balls in play when you swing at more marginal pitches.
C) Swing at fewer borderline pitches - what guys like Adam Jones need to do, but you risk getting yourself into bad counts and then having to swing.

The big issue is that I don't think Trout needs to do any of these things.  His swing rates in and out of the strike zone last year were pretty similar to his career averages.  His contact rate was down a little bit, but within the range where luck likely played a huge role.  It seems to me that almost any correction would probably be an overcorrection.  It looks like maybe he got a little unlucky last year, but given the same approach should strike out at a rate closer to the 2013 than the 2014 rate in the future.  His overall swing rates are still pretty low, and always have been, but they were actually up last year, and he struck out more.  Given his success rate when he does contact the ball, I wouldn't advocate swinging even more, but I definitely wouldn't advocate swinging less given that he already takes close to half the strikes thrown to him...

My bad.  I confused BL with dahs, who was concerned about a "definite downside" to Trout cutting down on his strikeouts.

Well, he still had the 10th highest K rate in the AL, all of his swing and contact rates were identical, and his offensive production was essentially the same (167 wRC+ in 2014 vs 172 in 2015). 

If Trout made a change in his approach, it wasn't a measurable change.