How to Fix Baseball's Strikeout Problem

New York Yankees teammates Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are set to strikeout a combined 500 times.

   
        Dave Kingman was an outfielder, first baseman, and designated hitter that played in the Major Leagues from 1971-1986. He was a 6'6 slugger that hit 442 home runs and drove in over 1,000 RBIs. These stats came with an extreme set of drawbacks. Dave Kingman only had a career .236 batting average, struck out 1,816 times, and had an on-base percentage of .302. Kingman's high risk-high reward approach was truly an anomaly for his era. Adam Dunn, who played from 2001-2014 had a nearly an identical career to Dave Kingman's. The only difference is that Adam Dunn was able to draw a lot of walks and had a pretty high on-base percentage. Even though Adam Dunn's career ended only four years ago, he was still somewhat of an anomaly in Major League Baseball. In 2018, it seems like there is one Dave Kingman or Adam Dunn per team. It is now routine that some players will strikeout 200 times a year. It is the age of the strikeout in Major League Baseball and if this year is any indication, it's not stopping anytime soon. April of the 2018 season was the first time in MLB history where there were more strikeouts than hits and there are several teams with more strikeouts than hits. Meanwhile, attendance has dropped dramatically.

   

Max Scherzer strikes out nearly 40% of the hitters that he faces.

     There are two big reasons for the MLB's strikeout rates exploding. The first is the overabundance of relief pitchers that throw 95 MPH and above. Every front office in the league is placing an emphasis on recruiting flamethrowers. Many teams now have at least 8 pitchers in the bullpen and managers aren't afraid to use them (My prior article deals a bit with this). Hitters can now expect to see multiple pitchers in a game and sometimes multiple pitchers in an inning that all throw 95 MPH or more. The advent of bullpenning will only make the strikeout problem even worse.
   

Nearly half of Texas Ranger's left-fielder Joey Gallo's hits have been home runs.

      Hitters are also culpable in the strikeout epidemic. Hitters have focused more on launch angles and have conceded to striking out more in order to hit more home runs. They've been encouraged by their teams, that have become far too accepting of strikeouts and encourage approaches to hitting that tends to lead to batters striking out more. Hitters are swinging up through strike zone instead of swinging straight across the strike zone in order to launch the ball as far and high as possible. This has caused hitters to swing and miss at more pitches.
     This combination of more power pitchers and more hitters swinging for the fences has resulted in one-third of plate appearances ending in either a walk, a strikeout, or a home run. This trend started in the 2017 season and has continued into the 2018 season. In fact, it has gotten even worse. For the first time in Major League history there were more strikeouts than hits in the months of April. General Managers and other people involved in baseball may say that this is a necessary trade-off so that more home runs can be hit, but at what cost? How many rallies have strikeout prone hitters killed because they were trying to hit home runs instead of just trying to get a hit? Who would you rather have up at the plate during a crucial moment of the game when runners are on base? Joey Gallo, who hit 40 home runs last year, but struck out 196 times and hit only .209 or would you rather have Jose Altuve, who hit .346 and only struck out 84 times?
     I don't think it's a coincidence that the 2017 Houston Astros won the World Series and had only two hitters in their everyday lineup that struck out more than 100 times. The Los Angeles Dodgers on the other hand had seven of their nine hitters strikeout more than 100 times. The Houston Astros are a team that makes contact and that has resulted in postseason success.
     There are solutions that can be reached to help curb the amount of strikeouts in the Major Leagues. First is that the overuse use of relief pitchers must be limited (Once again check my prior article for my thoughts on this). The other thing that must change is the the approach that hitters take to their craft. Hitters need to focus more on making contact and less on hitting long balls. Teams need to start encouraging hitters to make this change and stop promoting players that hit 30-40 home runs, but only hit .200. We can't go back to the days where certain elite hitters struck out less than 50 times a year, but Major League Baseball can take steps to ensure that there are less players that strikeout  175-200 times a year.
     Despite the numerous problems that the strikeout epidemic has caused, I don't think that anybody in Major League Baseball will take any steps to change it. The only way this situation will change is when it becomes utterly untenable. Analytics departments for Major League teams will have to crunch numbers and discover stats that show the drawbacks of striking out and TV ratings and ticket sales will have to completely collapse before Major League Baseball even begins to talk about any changes that could be made. We are now in uncharted waters. There's no telling how long the strikeout epidemic in baseball will last. It could be temporary or it could be that this is the way of the future. If that's the case then we can expect more of a game where nothing happens.