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I can't shed any real light on this issue. But one thing is definitely good about a strikeout -- it's not a GDP. The GDP is the second worst offensive outcome (after the rare triple play).

Also, usually, hitters who strike out alot also have alot of walks (true of all of the above Yankees but Soriano). The walks indicate that they have good plate discipline and that, when they do swing and make contact, they are swinging at their pitch rather than the pitcher's pitch. They can drive a pitch in their zone better and probably will generate more power (true of all of the above Yankees).

The high-strikeout hitters that a team wants to avoid are those who don't take alot of walks and those who don't have power. I would guess though that these types of batters don't last long in professional baseball though.

No clear K pattern in the post-season. The Yanks struck out 7 less times than the Diamondbacks in 2001 and they struck out only one more time than the Marlins in 2003. They struck out 7 more times than the Angels in 2002 and 6 more times in 2005.

Could it when those Ks come in the post-season, and from what batter in the order, where it counts the most?

Say, for example, that the 8th place batter on one team whiffs with the bases empty and two outs and the clean-up hitter on the other team whiffs with a runner on 3rd and one out. Yes, both teams had 1 K each, but, the clean-up hitter whiff is much more painful to his team.

I think the problem is fixating on a particular aspect of the game to the exclusion of all else - a high K rate for a batter might indicate selectiveness, as noted above. You're trying to compare a certain kind of out to an event which could have a good outcome, not to bad-outcome events. You could consider GIDPs, infield flies, foul outs...

I think the problem is fixating on a particular aspect of the game to the exclusion of all else
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Exactly. Baseball isn't set up that way.

Andy Hawkins can toss a no-hitter and lose

Steve Carlton can strike out 19 batters and lose

Adam Dunn can put up back to back 40 HR seasons despite k'ing 150+ times...

//You're trying to compare a certain kind of out to an event which could have a good outcome, not to bad-outcome events.//

Not really - at least I think. I'm talking about Contact vs. No Contact. Those are the only two outcomes at the contact level.

No contact, the whiff, is always bad. Whereas the stats show that with contact, you have the 20-80% chance of having something good happen.

The problem with this argument is that it can be interpreted as about 15 different arguments and no matter which one you argue, the person you're arguing with will argue a different, unrelated one to no end.

In general, a high strikeout rate is not a definitive indication of a poor batter. There are two basic reasons for a high strikeout rate : 1) being a bad batter 2) being an aggressive batter. You can be a good or bad aggressive batter, so striking out a lot is not necessarily an indicator of skill (general case - strikeout rate). This is the argument that a lot of people use that striking out (specific case - the action of striking out) is not a bad thing - good batters do it all the time and a team's strikeout rate is not significantly correlated to their runs scored (credit : mainsr, a long time ago, in a NetShrine thread). That argument doesn't fly with me for several reasons, but mainly because, as parenthetically stated above, it's using the general case to argue against a specific action.

For the general case, Steve's argument is one that I can't imagine any counter for. There is pretty clear statistical evidence (reference : can't remember offhand, but there are numerous studies you can probably google) that a strikeout as an individual event will increase the chances of the pitcher's team winning the ballgame. How does that not translate to a strikeout as an individual event decreasing the chances of the batter's team winning the game? Striking out is a bad thing. BAD. Always.

Actually I was going to type up a long explanation as to why this is so, however Rob Neyer already did it for me:

Essentially, it boils down to the fact that a high strikeout hitter can compensate for striking out in other ways, while a low strikeout pitcher can not.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2002/0206/1323868.html

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For the third (and last) time, I present you with an imaginary e-mail (my favorite kind): "Rob, I understand that strikeouts for hitters aren't really so bad. But if they're not bad for hitters, then why are they so good for pitchers?"

Before I try to explain why they're so good for pitchers, let me first try to convince you that they are good for pitchers. And the simplest explanation is simply that pitchers with low strikeout rates are rarely successful for long. Or for short.

One of the few pitchers able to achieve great success with a low strikeout rate was Mark Fidrych. In 1976, when he went 19-9 with a league-best 2.34 ERA, Fidrych struck out only 97 hitters in 250 innings, or 3.5 per nine innings.

That's an almost absurdly low figure. I entered career stats for every Hall of Fame pitcher whose careers began in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s. There are 15 of them, and they can be broken into four (somewhat arbitrary) groups. At the bottom of the list, with 5.04 strikeouts per nine innings, is Jim Palmer. This seems a little weird, as Palmer was considered a power pitcher, but his strikeout rate dropped quite a bit over the last seven seasons of his career.

Anyway, six of the pitchers struck out between five and six hitters per nine innings: Palmer, plus Catfish Hunter, Whitey Ford, Phil Niekro, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry. Five of the pitchers struck out between six and seven hitters per nine innings: Don Sutton, Fergie Jenkins, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning and Tom Seaver. Two of the pitchers struck out (slightly) more than seven hitters per nine innings: Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson. And two pitchers struck out more than nine hitters per nine innings: Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan, of course.

All of that is probably more information than you need; here's everything boiled down to the important stuff ... the pitcher with the lowest strikeout rate in the group of Hall of Famers was Palmer, with five strikeouts per nine innings. Fidrych’s strikeout rate in his great season was 30 percent lower than Palmer's career rate.

Another way to look at this ... Instead of focusing on pitchers with Hall of Fame careers, what about pitchers with great seasons? I entered the single-season stats for every American League pitcher who finished No. 1 or No. 2 in ERA in the 1970s (AL only, because the DH presumably has an effect on strikeout rates).

That results in 20 pitcher seasons and 13 pitchers (Vida Blue, Gaylord Perry, Catfish Hunter, Bert Blyleven and Ron Guidry appear twice, Palmer three times). As a group, the pitchers struck out 5.87 batters per nine innings. And at 3.5 strikeouts per nine innings, Fidrych is still the low man on the totem pole. But at least he's got some company this time, in the person of Tommy John, who finished with the second-lowest ERA in 1979 despite striking out only 3.6 hitters per nine innings. By that point in his career, T.J. was 36 years old and his left elbow was stuck together with cold cuts and chewing gum; earlier in his career, before the injury, his strikeout rates were generally right around the league average.

And here, finally, is why strikeouts are important ... If you don't strike out at least a moderate number of hitters, you have to do everything else almost perfectly. Here are the pitching lines for Fidrych and John in the aforementioned seasons:

IP HR BB SO
The Bird, 1976 250 12 53 97
Tommy J., 1979 276 9 65 111
Totals 527 21 118 198

Great control, and an amazing ability (or something) to limit the number of home runs. But there are very few pitchers who can maintain those successes. In fact, Bill James argues, in his latest book, that the odds were very long against Fidrych enjoying a distinguished career, even absent injury, because no post-1950 pitcher who began his career with that sort of strikeout rate amounted to much of anything.

(As it turns out, in addition to giving up very few home runs and walks, Fidrych also allowed just a .250 batting average on batted balls in play, which is pretty phenomenal, and not a rate he'd have been likely to maintain over a number of years.)

So why does a pitcher need strikeouts? Why can't he simply throw the ball over the plate and let the enemy hit weak grounders and pop-ups all day long? Because baseball doesn't work that way. The great majority of pitchers -- yes, even Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson -- don't actually have much effect on batted balls in play. As we've seen in past columns, even the greatest pitchers will generally allow a .300 batting average on balls in play that aren't home runs.

Randy Johnson, though, doesn't have to worry about anybody hitting .300 against him. Hitters batted .330 against him last year when they managed to put the ball in play, but they had a devil of a time putting the ball in play, and actually batted .203 against Johnson.

Of course, there's only one Big Unit. But for every pitcher on the planet, every strikeout is one less chance for the hitters to get a hit.

Getting back to the original question, what's different about hitters and pitchers? Essentially, it's this: Many hitters are able to compensate for high strikeout rates with other positive things, like home runs and walks. But very few pitchers are able to compensate for low strikeout rates. The math just doesn't work for them.

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Hope this is what you were looking for.

Thanks for the link, etc., MFG.

I'm more interested in the big drill down - the one K. How come it's good, in a one BF situation for a pitcher to whiff the batter (and take his D out of the equation) - yet, for the batter, according to sabermetrics, it's no big deal to whiff in that one PA (as the stats say that it's the same impact on runs as any other out). It doesn't seem equal - esp. when you look at the % of good things that can happen for a batter with contact (as opposed to the K).