Posted by donaldjl on 11/7/2017 4:47:00 PM (view original):
What makes you think Escobar's K rate will rise if he becomes more selective? He'll make less outs but his K rate might go up sounds contradictory because he'd have to make better contact to make less outs.
Being more selective means he'll go deeper into counts. That results in more strikeouts.
It's not contradictory, though.
Assuming he's able to do it (and that's a HUGE assumption because being a really good, selective major league hitter is ******* hard), he'll strike out more often but he will make outs in play less often. The balls he does hit will more likely become hits because he picked out a pitch he could drive instead of swinging at a bad pitch and making weak contact.
That's all a huge if...don't take that as me saying he could do that. I'm just using it as an example of an approach change that would improve performance.