Tyrone Slothrop wrote:Striking out too often as a hitter diminishes chances of ground balls sneaking through/poor defence/luckily placed fly balls. Over the course of one game, it doesn't seem very significant, but over the course of a season it can have a huge impact on a player's OBP. Unless you have an Adam Dunn type, who can take enough walks and hit for enough power that you can live with strikeouts, striking out a lot is a serious problem for a hitter.
So you're saying that the bottom line is on-base and power. Which is exactly why I quoted his OBA and SLG. The type of outs are largely unimportant. For every groundout that moves a runner from 2nd to 3rd, there's a groundout that turns into a GIDP. We need to look at OBA/SLG as "state functions"... the path to getting to the final numbers is largely irrelevant. If you want to include the 1% of groundouts that turn into errors, go ahead. It won't affect the overall numbers. Just don't discriminate against the K. It means hitters are swinging harder and when they do make contact with the ball, it has a better chance of becoming a hit and it goes further. I'll take that over an empty Polanco/Ichiro-esque .300 batting average any day. And this all doesn't really apply to Cust because most of his stats were accumulated 2+ years ago, but this is just general theory of going against the strikeout stigma and under-appreciation of getting on base and hitting for power.
