The future of Shohei Ohtani

[mrreality68]

This says it all

[Peter_Spaeth]

Call me old school but hard for me to get worked up about a guy batting .220.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Call me old school but hard for me to get worked up about a guy batting .220.

you are correct his batting average is bad but he is a career .253 batting average.
And this current era of baseball is more about power than average. And this is sadly the era when strike outs are very high amongst most baseball players and no one really cares.
Adam Dunn always gets blasted for his high strike outs and you do not year those some things nowadays

Matt Olson has 155 strikeouts(10th overall) on the season with weeks to go. Kyle Schwarber has 190 strikeouts(1st overall)

Peter alonso has 128(48th overall)

Almost all the top home run hitters this year accept the True Top Players have high strikeouts and below average batting average

[Peter_Spaeth]

Baseball has never loved guys like Dunn, Kingman, Rob Deer, Gorman Thomas, and so on and so on with high HRs, high Ks and low BA. Jeff you say it's more accepted now but is it? The overall impact should still be the same, whether you measure it by WAR or something else.

[G1911]

What gets me is that strikeouts are treated as if they are meaningless for a batter, a not very significant measure and it's okay to rack up 150-200 of them.

Yet, they are treated as very important, one of the most important measures, for a pitcher.

As this is a direct adversarial relationship, this doesn't make sense. If a particular outcome of a plate appearance is really important positively for a pitcher, it is really bad for a batter and vice versa.

I don't so much care that we either go back to not liking batter strikeouts or not, but this should be consistent.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by G1911

What gets me is that strikeouts are treated as if they are meaningless for a batter, a not very significant measure and it's okay to rack up 150-200 of them.

Yet, they are treated as very important, one of the most important measures, for a pitcher.

As this is a direct adversarial relationship, this doesn't make sense. If a particular outcome of a plate appearance is really important positively for a pitcher, it is really bad for a batter and vice versa.

I don't so much care that we either go back to not liking batter strikeouts or not, but this should be consistent.

I think analytics has a lot to do with this thinking. For hitters, the thinking, if I remember correctly, is that a strikeout is better then hitting into a double play so a high strikeout total is no big deal. For pitchers, strikeouts are good because you don't have to worry about fielders making a play. That’s why they're important for pitchers but not a concern for hitters. Not sure I agree with the thinking for hitters since a lot of good things can happen when you just put the ball in play.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Baseball has never loved guys like Dunn, Kingman, Rob Deer, Gorman Thomas, and so on and so on with high HRs, high Ks and low BA. Jeff you say it's more accepted now but is it? The overall impact should still be the same, whether you measure it by WAR or something else.

I don't know that we can lump Pete Alonso into the group of high strikeout/low average folks you mentioned, just yet.

His career WAR of 17.6 in 4.5 seasons is already almost as high as the career totals for Dunn (17.9), Thomas (19.8), and is higher than Kingman (17.3), Deer (13.8).

This got me thinking though, so I put together the below table to compare and added a few other sluggers (Howard, Kiner, Ortiz, and Thome).

A few things jumped out: Alonso's Strikeout to At-bat rate of 26% is lower than most others. But his walk rate is per Plate Appearance is lower than all of them except Kingman.

His HR/AB is the highest, and is actually even higher this year at 8.9%.

What I fear is that because he is a very large man, he may not age well. And he started his career relatively late, getting to the majors at age 24. Thome is a large man who aged well, but many think he did Roids. Same for Ortiz.

[BobbyStrawberry]

A big difference with now vs. earlier eras is that sacrificing contact for power is not only acceptable now, but for many players, the best way toward a big payday. Guys like Schwarber (with his .199 BA and 43 HRs) are super valuable and highly sought after in the current game.

Of course, the Acunas and Corbin Carrolls with speed and power are the gems, but there are only so many of those guys

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobbyStrawberry

A big difference with now vs. earlier eras is that sacrificing contact for power is not only acceptable now, but for many players, the best way toward a big payday. Guys like Schwarber (with his .199 BA and 43 HRs) are super valuable and highly sought after in the current game.

Of course, the Acunas and Corbin Carrolls with speed and power are the gems, but there are only so many of those guys

Kingman was ahead of his time.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

I don't know that we can lump Pete Alonso into the group of high strikeout/low average folks you mentioned, just yet.

His career WAR of 17.6 in 4.5 seasons is already almost as high as the career totals for Dunn (17.9), Thomas (19.8), and is higher than Kingman (17.3), Deer (13.8).

This got me thinking though, so I put together the below table to compare and added a few other sluggers (Howard, Kiner, Ortiz, and Thome).

A few things jumped out: Alonso's Strikeout to At-bat rate of 26% is lower than most others. But his walk rate is per Plate Appearance is lower than all of them except Kingman.

His HR/AB is the highest, and is actually even higher this year at 8.9%.

What I fear is that because he is a very large man, he may not age well. And he started his career relatively late, getting to the majors at age 24. Thome is a large man who aged well, but many think he did Roids. Same for Ortiz.

I don't recall hearing speculation about Thome and steroids. Where have you seen that? Any sources you can provide? Ortiz, yes, because of the survey test that he supposedly failed, but nothing I remember being said about Thome.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by jayshum

I don't recall hearing speculation about Thome and steroids. Where have you seen that? Any sources you can provide? Ortiz, yes, because of the survey test that he supposedly failed, but nothing I remember being said about Thome.

Its just a lot of speculation like there is about Piazza because he was a big guy who hit a lot of home runs during the steroid era. There is no hard evidence at all that I am aware of. I hope Thome didn't use steroids, as that gives me hope that Alonso can age well too.