Chasing a Ghost?

A post earlier today discussed the high scoring on Friday night. It pointed out the high number of home runs, but also the high number of strikeouts:

The night produced 263 K, the fifth highest total of the season.

The whole idea of going after pitchers who strike out a lot of batters is that strikeouts reduce hits, and should reduce scoring. That is, as strikeouts increase, scoring should decrease. Now we know that batters adjust to increased pitcher strikeouts with more power, but last night brought home just how true that is.

Looking at runs as a function of strikeouts, I found a slightly negative slope for 2017. By slightly negative, I mean very close to zero. I then looked at 2007. The slope was slightly positive, but also close to 0. So I decided to look at a long time period, 1980-1999. That’s 20 seasons during which baseball changed a great deal. Here is the graph of runs as a function of strikeouts, with the linear regression equation (click for a larger image):

Strikeouts and Runs, 1980-1999

Strikeouts have no ability to predict runs scored in a game. Now, I am looking at total runs in a game. If you look at team games, there is a better equation, y = -0.06x + 4.84. So a ten strikeout game will reduce scoring by about 0.6 runs. The R-squared is very small, however, .0027. It’s a very unreliable predictor. Batters and pitchers constantly adjust to each other. Batters hit more home runs, so pitchers figure out how to prevent other hits (more strikeouts). Pitcher reduce other hits, so batters hit more home runs. Eventually, we may get to where all games are like Friday night’s Dodgers-Brewers games, tons of strike outs and a few runs on homers.

How to solve the problem? The simplest fix in my mind would be to deaden the ball and make the strike zone bigger. When batters are unable to hit the ball out of the park with any regularity, they will need to start finding holes. A larger strike zone will force them to swing more, and make contact more. It would favor the Tony Gwynn-Derek Jeter-George Brett-Ichrio Suzuki-Joe-DiMaggio-Ty Cobb type of hitter over the strikeout slugger. It would favor speed over bulk. It would reset the game to a pre-Ruth era, but that might not be such a bad thing.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2qTde2T