Interesting discussion, on many fronts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by injury log
But that's not the question we were originally talking about. We were discussing whether strikeouts were any worse than other kinds of outs. If you have two guys in OOTP with the same Contact rating, those guys make the same number of outs. If they have different AvoidK ratings, they strike out at different rates, but one grounds out or flies out more, the other strikes out more. My point was that those players are of roughly equivalent value, offensively, all else being equal. That is, all those strikeouts don't hurt your offense much more than all those groundouts and fly outs will.
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To this point, I think the discussion is a bit semantic and causing dispute.
You are absolutely right that an out is an out. A strike out for an out is no different than a pop up for an out is no different from a ground out for an out is no different than a line out for an out. All of this assuming that no runners advance on any of these outs and no double/triple plays occur on the non strikeout outs.
How often runners advance with non strikeouts and how often runners are erased in double/triple plays and how that affects game winning chances...for the sake of discussion, here, let's call it a wash.
Injury log is right that an out is an out is an out.
However, the application of this to RL is flawed due to reducing the comparison of outs, and outs alone, while electing to ignore how the outs were generated and how that affects game winning chances.
Runners on second and third, down 1 and 2 outs. It doesn't matter if your batter strikes out or lines out. The game is over, same difference. But is the strikeout just as good (or equally bad) as the line out? The line drive can become the game winning hit. The strikeout cannot. Therefore, the line drive is better because it has the potential to win the game.
Runners on second and third, down 1 and one out. A strikeout is better than a line-out DP that ends the game. Do we say that the batter that struck out had a better AB than the batter that torched the ball down the third base line requiring a Brooks Robinsonian dive by the third baseman that brought him to rest on the bag? I don't think so.
When parsing data it must be kept in mind what exactly we have removed from the equation to perform our analysis of the parsed data before we stick it back into the original equation, the context of winning a baseball game, in this case, and draw a conclusion that is not applicable to the original question.
It doesn't matter if you strike out or line out with 2 out and 2 men on and down 1. The inning is over, just the same, either way. There is a big difference in potential outcomes between taking a called third strike vs hitting a ball on a rope.