All or Nothing: Strikeouts and Home Runs
Post date: Sep 14, 2017 10:30:38 PM
The dominant explanation for the trend towards three outcomes baseball is that hitters are approaching a plate appearance with a priority on hitting home runs. That priority increases the risk of a strikeout, but the hitters are willing to take the risk. Home runs and strikeouts have been a part of the game since its inception. The prevalence of an all or nothing strategy hitters take in three outcomes baseball is new.
A pitch traveling to the plate is typically traveling over 80 miles per hour, and the best fast balls today are at or above 100 miles an hour. In order to hit a baseball, a hitter has less than one second (check) to make a decision about where the ball will be, when it will get there, and how to get the barrel of their bat to the ball. The players who reach the major leagues have already proven they have the bat speed and hand eye coordination to hit a fastball. If all pitchers threw straight fastballs, it would be easy for these guys to succeed at the plate. But pitchers have strategies for dealing with hitters skills. First, their pitches move. Most famously, a curve ball loops up to the plate. But a slider can break left or right at 90 miles an hour. And the best fast balls are not only fast, but move. The balls are fast, and pitchers can make them move. Second, pitchers can control the speed of a ball. The best pitchers will have the ability to throw a 95 mile an hour fastball and an off-speed pitch like a changeup that initially looks like a fastball but travels five to ten miles an hour slower. If the movement on a pitch is often described as nasty, the best off-speed pitches are just cruel.
Knowing the challenges of hitting a pitched ball, it is perhaps not surprising to see a batter occasionally look silly at the plate. When a hitter goes to the plate he has a split second to decide if and where the ball will move, and how fast it is traveling. One wrong decision and he will miss the ball, or if lucky foul it off. In order to hit a home run a hitter needs to swing hard. The cliché descriptions are common in baseball – he needs to swing for the fences; needs to knock the cover off the ball. Planning to swing hard makes the hitter vulnerable to the pitches tools of moving the ball and changing the speed. Going all in with the swing decreases the opportunity for pitch recognition, and increases the chance of swinging and missing. But when they do make contact, they hit the ball hard.
There are other approaches to hitting. Some hitters prioritize making contact, and putting the ball in play. These hitters will hold back, try to increase the opportunity to recognize a pitch, and count on bat speed to get the barrel to the ball. With this approach, not every hit is at full power. It is more or less taken for granted these days that hitting home runs results in more strikeouts, and the more controlled hitters have fewer home runs and strikeouts.
The controlled hitter and the all or nothing hitter are part of a logical continuum when considering the relationship between home runs and strikeouts. There are two other possible combinations of home runs and strikeouts, however. Most interesting are those hitters who take a controlled approach at the plate, but still manage to hit home runs. Their control at the plate allows them to keep their strikeouts low, but their abilities at pitch recognition and power allow them to hit a number of home runs as well. Another less glamorous group are those with high strikeout rates, but low home run rates. Perhaps these are players willing to risk strikeouts for home runs, but not succeeding.
Figure 3. Player Home Run and Strikeout rates, 2017
We can easily start to look at these different combinations of outcomes. Figure 3 is a simple scatterplot looking at the relationship between strikeout and home runs rates in 2017. The 20 three outcomes hitters discussed earlier are highlighted in orange in the graph. The two reference lines mark the average home run and strikeout rates. Using these reference lines, players in the top left hand quadrant are those with above average home run and strikeout rates. This is where we will find most of our three outcomes hitters. Joey Gallo and Aaron Judge are noted in the graph because of their ranking as the top two three outcomes rates in 2017. Matt Olson stands out in this graph for his particularly high home run rate. It is worth mentioning that only Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire have had a season home run rate over 10%. Bonds and McGuire maintained this rate over more than 600 at bats in a full season of baseball. Olson was only in the majors for half a season, but the rate is still impressive.
A Trend Towards Three Outcomes Baseball