My original statement was the bold, "a single is always better than a walk." The point I conceded is about value of seeing pitches. But you make a great counter in that you also get yourself into unfavorable counts.

Now my comments in this thread have more to do with teaching kids how to hit. So many coaches have the philosophy that a walk is as good as a hit or take pitches until you have a strike on you. I have always taught my son to swing at anything he can hit with a focusing on making contact (3-0 counts aside). If you make contact, you can never be struck out (aside from the foul tip third strike).

I hate the philosophy of taking pitches just for the sake of taking pitches. Batters need to be taught to see the ball and make contact. As soon as you teach them to just stand and take pitches, they tend to get frozen and are unable to swing aggressively.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

As with anything, I think it's good to have a mix of both styles.

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They listened enough to test it, didn't they? Are they supposed to treat everything that comes from the mouth of a big leaguer as gospel and not question it? Don't you question McCarver's own wisdom when you deride my points by calling them "McCarverism"? Pick a lane, dude.

I didn't say that everything out of a big leaguers mouth is gospel. In fact, I stated earlier that athletes say a lot of stupid shit. But guys looking at data come to a lot of dumb conclusions as well. For example, that Javier Vazquez was a better pitcher than Mark Buehrle.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Well define "often" then, because the AVG's and ISO's from 2008-2017 for batters swinging on the first pitch (.343/.209) pale in comparison to the AVG/ISO of hitters in 3-0 (.374/.375) and 3-1 (.352/.281). Even batters in a 2-1 (.338/.211) or 2-0 (.327/.205) count fared comparably to first-pitch-swingers (hey buddy).

Even in a different baseball era (1980-88), the AVG/ISO of the league on the first pitch (.314/.153) was beat out by the league's performance in later counts like 3-0 (.290/.242), 3-1 (.318/.214), and comparable to the league's performance in 2-0 (.327/.205) and 2-1 (.304/.159) counts.

You're like Hawk, spouting truisms you just know to be true, but are fundamentally incorrect.

Damn.

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Of course, there's going to be a better average on a positive count. But you have to get to it. The massive strikeout rates in today's game aren't caused by guys getting to 3-0 all the time.

You're like a pull-toy that spouts conventional wisdom. The Poster That Reads And Then Regurgitates Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

From 1980-1988, games averaged 2 instances of plate appearances ending at 3-0 or 3-1.

From 2008-2017, games average 3 instances of plate appearances ending at 3-0 or 3-1.

The "fetishization of walks", as you put it, has resulted in more players getting deep into counts.

So not only are you wrong about the first pitch being a hitter's best opportunity to hit, you're wrong about how often they actually get to those opportunities in the modern game.

I'm not wrong. Here's where you state the obvious. Of course the fetishization of the walk has resulted in longer counts. And far more strikeouts many of which are occurring prior to a three ball count.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

...and thus more opportunities for batters to see pitches they can hit, as demonstrated to you by the differences in performance later in counts vs. swinging on the first pitch.

You said the first pitch was "often their best opportunity", and that is not the case, not in quality of opportunity, nor in frequency.

Except it is because taking that first pitch results in a guy getting into a bad count more often than him getting to 3-0 or 3-1. Of course if a batter could hit off a 3-0 or a 3-1 count every time, he would. But that's just stating the obvious again.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Gadzooks! I thought the old man was down, but he's got some fight in him!

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2008-2017 per game rate of PA's ending with the batter ahead: 13.04
2008-2017 per game rate of PA's ending with the pitcher ahead: 12.26

That totals 3 the number of ways you've been demonstrably wrong about this entire thing. Will he hit the superfecta?

JLN getting beat like he stole something. Rough to watch.

_________________
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

That isn't true in the slightest.

Always thought it'd be fun to pop into a thread where one guy is completely getting his ass handed to him and be like "wow, long time guy is dominating this argument."

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That's gonna be the next board meme for MANY, and then nobody is going to know with whom various allegiances lie.

troll

That isn't the comparison. I never made any statement about the breakdown of counts in the way you're suggesting. Obviously with batters striking out more than ever, more counts are ending with the batter behind than the historical average. If you stopped just regurgitating stats for a minute and actually thought about it, you'd see that I'm correct.

And I suspect for purposes of the stat you posted above the batter is "ahead" on a 3-2 count which isn't actually the case. That would mean a strikeout is an even count.

Almost 39,000 batters struck out last season. That's compared to about 32,000 in 1998, the first year there were 30 teams.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It sort of is, because you respond to my factual statements with non sequiturs.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

1980-88 per game rate of PA's ending with the pitcher ahead: 10.83
1980-88 per game rate of PA's ending with the batter ahead: 13.53







No, it is the standing of the count when the PA-ending pitch is delivered. The "even count" split shows only 11K strikeouts, not the 30K you mentioned for last year.

Please think for a minute instead of just reading stats.

So that's a 2-2 count.

There were exactly 38,982 strikeouts last season. The way you're trying to spin it, when the strikeout occurred off a 3-2 count the at-bat ended with the batter ahead. That's a dumb way to put it.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Genuinely curious: what are your guys' thoughts on the value of win-loss records?

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Better question for this discussion: Do you consider the batter ahead on a 3-2 count?

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You know I don't get involved in these things.

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No IMO, no advantage to hitter or pitcher in a full count.

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That's the way the game is counted. There is no "count" of a strikeout, it just is a strikeout, I don't know what you want me to do about it. Stick to the points you've made, all of which have been thoroughly refuted.

It is? I've never heard anyone say the batter was ahead on a full count except you in this thread.

The point is, you're now trying to use semantics to distract from the obvious fact that a strikeout on a full count is a negative for the batter.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Are you now trying to make my argument? Even if we properly remove the full counts from where you mistakenly have them in the "batter ahead" column, you can see that batters today are in more bad counts than they have been historically which has led to the skyrocketing strikeout numbers. That should be obvious but you're so busy trying to use statistics to "refute" something you're missing it.

_________________
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 Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That's the way the stats are recorded, yes. What do you want me to do about it? That would require the count to be "even" on both 2-2 and 3-2, despite the pitcher throwing a ball on the 2-2 count...that defies logic. And if, in practice, the two were actually the same game condition despite the vagaries of terminology, we would not observe a difference between performance in 2-2 and 3-2 "even" counts. We do observe a difference, and it's a pretty big one in the batter's favor: .189/.096 for 2-2, and .220/.139 for 3-2.



Says the guy who started asking whether 3-2 actually has the batter "ahead" when shown his declarative statements are hilariously untrue.