What if question about strikeouts

[vannzee]

What if Adam Dunn and Pat Burrell were on the same team or atleast two players of a skill set close to theirs. Would their high strikeouts bogg down a offense or would they protect one another?

Or maybe if this is the case, it would be smart to bat one higher in the order and one lower or sandwhich a lesser hitter between the two?

Ive just had too many thoughts in my head and I figured there would be some good answers to this question.

[rluzinski]

I think your best bet would be to maximize their AB and bat them both as high in the order as possible. There will be times when their strikeouts will hurt you but on the balance, it largely balances out, I don't think.

[DuWayne Steurer]

2 batters next to each other in the order with high strikeouts and high OBP are going to hit into fewer DP's.

[vannzee]

I wish there was more reports on this kind of thing. Theres alot of ways that such a thing could go right. For example, you have one high power hitter providing protection for another or you bat them something like 3rd and 5th. That way your 2nd (a high on base guy) and 4th get added protection.

 

But if you bat them back to back, what if theres a man in scoring position but they both strikeout? And having two slow runners one after another could clog the bases and make it harder for them to score on a base hit. Strikeouts wouldnt result in a double play but they dont advance runners either.

 

Also, thats not even going into the defensive aspect. In the AL you could hide one as a DH and maybe the other at first. In the NL maybe 1st and a corner outfield spot.

 

The on base percentages would lead to more pitches thrown, and more base runners does lead to more runs. But does the high on base percentages outweigh the other problems it could cause?

[Ennder]

But if you bat them back to back, what if theres a man in scoring position but they both strikeout?

 

What if they both hit HRs. What if they both walk. They have done studies on this and it the upshot is situational strikeouts matter so little that you can probably just ignore them.

[endaround]

In one word yes. OBP and SLG are first order concerns for offense. They basically make up about 95% of offense, everything else basically fits in the remaining 5%. (Ok, really high level of SBs can be more than 5%, but it needs be really high)

[Ennder]

To isolate this more for you lets take a look at Dunn. I think we can all agree that strike outs vs outs are probably a wash in situations where you can hit into a double play. They are also a wash when there are already 2 outs. Remember we are looking at strike outs vs outs, not just vs balls in plays. Since we know the players OBP/AVG that takes care of the 'hits' already.

 

Dunn got up with with RISP and less than 2 outs only 103 times last year. He got up with less than 2 outs and a runner on 3rd just 46 times last year. He strikes out roughly 1 time per 4 PA. So we are talking about something between 46 and 103 PA where his strike outs had a chance to matter where he struck out between 12 and 26 times. If he cut his strike outs in half you'd have between 6 and 13 strike outs in situations where it actually had a chance to hurt you over an entire season and not every one of those would actually hurt you since plenty of non K outs aren't productive.

 

His other 140ish strike outs made no difference at all.

[rluzinski]

And while the notion of protection is a popular thing to talk about in baseball, there's little evidence of it's existence. A power hitter's walks may go up a little without protection but that's not necessarily a bad thing!

 

Lineup construction is a lot of fun to think and talk about. Unfortunately , simulations show that any reasonable lineup will yield about the same runs as a an optimized one. While I'm sure that sims don't account for every variable, it's doubtful that it's blind to some signicant effect. I wish it was.

 

You do want to split up your lefties, however.

[joepepsi]

But fans remember strikeouts! A ground out to the ss with a runner on 2nd is excusable. But a strikeout? How could a batter be so bad?

[phxMILWfan]

I'd love to see the stats on Prince's ABs following a Braun home run. While one hitter protecting another may be overrated, it seemed like the entire year if Braun hit a home run, Prince came up and either struck out or hit a weak ground ball. Could someone tell me how to find those stats?

[phxMILWfan]

Ok I wanted to make sure I wasn't being that crazy uncle or annoying friend who sees what they want to see. This is the first time I've ever gone back and checked game logs so if someone finds a mistake I'll understand. This is what I believe Prince's stats are like when he directly followed a Ryan Braun home run in 2008.

BA .188 / OBP .235 / K 9 / HR 1 / RBI 1 /

I didn't keep track of it but of the 17 times he did put the ball in play for an out, a lot were ground ball outs (I know this doesn't mean a lot but I was excited to see that I was right). Hopefully a 2 year deal will help Prince relax and not put as much pressure on these at bats. AB when he did not follow a Braun HR his stats were...

BA .280 / OBP .380 / K 125 / HR 33 / RBI 101

Looking forward to what everyone thinks of this. I'm sure I'm proving something that most people thought was the case already but I still found it interesting.