Just like other lame posters on this board, I am going to bump my own comments until others respond to them!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

He is really strange on the sidelines, but it seems to be working now.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

He's strange too, but it's not working quite as well.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Is he rubbing his whistle on that dudes head?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Stonesroses correctly answered this.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

How can it be that as it concerns a batter- Adam Dunn, for example- a strikeout is "just the way he makes his outs", yet that is apparently not so for a pitcher?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

That's exactly how I view it.

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It simply can't be that a strikeout is neutral on the batter side and preferable on the pitcher side. It doesn't make any sense.

When people begin parroting the stuff they read on Fangraphs or Baseball Prospectus, I think most of the time they aren't really giving what they're saying much thought.

For example, if you believe that Adam Dunn is a "three outcome player" (and I have heard people insist this is the case) wouldn't a lower batting average automatically mean less homeruns?

Also, how do you square your belief in BABIP normalizing at around .300 with the idea that a strikeout is just another out?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Sorry. I meant that I don't put any additional scorn or praise of a strikeout. It's just another out.

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I knew what you meant. I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree, but I am sure it has to work the same way on the batter's side as it does on the pitcher's.

How can Dunn's strikeouts not matter if you truly believe that all BA normalizes around .300? If that's the case, then the strikeouts are critical since given enough time everyone hits near .300 on the balls he puts in play.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

if 20 strikeout games were so comparable, there would be 23 of them by now...there are not. they are statistically rarer, therefore more AMAZING! period. end of story. to think otherwise is obtuse.

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@audioidkid

As Rick has said, hitting 3 sac flies in a game is rarer than hitting 4 HR in a game. Do you think that makes it more AMAZING?

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So you think a pitcher that allowed 2 baserunners had a more amazing outing than a pitcher who allowed zero baserunners.

I find that thinking to be obtuse.

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If a ball is hit in play, there are three outcomes: H, E/FC, Out. If there are runners on base, it could also advance a runner or cause multiple outs. Regardless, putting a ball in play has the chance for a positive outcome. The only way a K can be positive is if the catcher drops the third strike. So K's are not a desireable outcome with compared to actually putting the ball in play.... especially if their are runners on base.

How many pitchers do you think go out with the #1 goal to strike out 20 batters?

How many pitchers do you think go out with the #1 goal to stop all batters from reaching base?

The 20 strikeouts thing could happen a lot more if pitchers only cared about strikeouts. They don't. It would be like calling a basketball game the greatest in history because a player had more dunks than anyone else. The #1 goal of a pitcher is not to get a strikeout. It's to get an out.

We can play these games all day.
Number of MLB players with at least 60 sacrifice bunts in a season: 2
Number of MLB players with at least 60 home runs in a single season: 8

Edit: Updated that statistic. Didn't realize it was per year.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Potentially, yes. If the guy who allowed zero baserunners had 0 k's so 27 times his defense needed to make a play, I could easily see how that is not as good as a performance as a guy who relied on his defense for only 7/8 outs.


Again, this isn't black and white. It really depends on the value you place individually on strike outs, batting average of balls in play etc. There are very smart people who can eloquently argue both sides of this issue.

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Team Cutler.

If a team is putting balls in play on a pitcher, he is not being as dominant as a pitcher who is not allowing balls to be hit at all.

To me, it domonstrates more pitching dominance to strike a batter out than to have him hit a grounder to the SS.

That being said, Don Larson's perfect game in WS is the greatest pitching performance ever.

Isn't it just the way he records his out? Adam Dunn just happens to make his outs via strikeout. Kerry Wood just happened to record his that way. I don't see what "dominance" has to do with it. Is Adam Dunn getting dominated half the time? If so, how could he be an All-Star?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Because a ball in play has a 30% chance to be a hit.

Bernstein's Dunn makes his outs by K's theory is incorrect.

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Team Cutler.

Milt Pappas pitched a hell of a game.

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But does it still have a 30% to chance to be a hit when Theo has Sveum use the latest and greatest spray charts?

I'm not sure of the answers here. I'm just pointing out that pitching and hitting are actually the same thing just from different dugouts.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Obviously I'm sure not the answer either, but I can't imagine that even with Theo's shifts it lowers the season long average of BABIP much lower than .280? .285?

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Team Cutler.

After all the banter back and forth on this subject, it really all ends up being at its heart a Cub vs. Sox issue. If Buehrle pitched the 20 K game and Wood pitched the perfect game the arguments in these threads would be all switched up.

I tend to agree with Dan, this is not all as black and white as some would like it to be.

I would also say that Larsen's perfect game in the World Series remains the greatest game ever pitched. IMO Wood's game would be in the top 5.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

If you really think about the theory behind BABIP, positioning the fielders couldn't possibly reduce the normalized batting average by any significant amount. The idea being that no one really knows where a batted ball might land. Obviously, a batter may be trying to hit it somewhere and a pitcher trying to make him hit it somewhere else, and some guys are better than others at each of these crafts, but over a large enough sample it will always be close to .300 regardless of anything you do. At least in theory, right?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Not really. To me it's a discussion on the value of the strikeout. If strikeouts are good for Kerry Wood, logic suggests they are bad for Adam Dunn.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

What would you guys say if I argued that Jake Peavy was one of the 15 greatest pitchers of all time? Anyone disagree?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It's interesting to think about. I wonder if there is any solid information about pitch locations and shifts and the likelihood of a ball being hit to a certain spot.

If you shift your defense right and your pitcher executes pitches on the outer 1/3rd of the plate against a right handed hitter, what percentage of the time will the batter hit the ball to the right side? I'm guessing the babip would be significantly lower than the 30% in that situation.


Obviously that doesn't take into account if the pitcher misses his spot and the batter turns on the ball. With the shift probably moving upwards of 40% in that case.

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Team Cutler.

There's not a definitive answer either way.

What is definitive is that Aaron Rogers molests pot-bellied pigs.

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