Decade of decadence

Pennants, strikeouts don't go hand in hand

By Jacob Luft, SI.com

Pat Burrell made the walk of shame 142 times last season. Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Much like geologic time tables, baseball history is separated into eras, each with its own defining characteristics.

We are 10 years into the current baseball era, which started in 1994 as MLB expanded to six divisions and baseballs began flying out of the park at about the same rate that the Paris Hilton video has been downloaded recently.

Along with that explosion of power hitting came a lot of strikeouts. Lots and lots of strikeouts. Whiffs became as fashionable as hip-huggers and intentionally sloppy hair. So now we have an annual race to see who can break Bobby Bonds' single-season strikeout record first, led by such carefree sluggers as Jose Hernandez and Preston Wilson.

And the downside is ... what, exactly? Has anybody put a finger on why striking out was seen as such an ignoble act for all those eras of baseball history? Why was Joe DiMaggio so admired for compiling nearly as many home runs (361) as whiffs (369) during his career?

If you take a look at it from a team-wide perspective, then it becomes clear that the strikeout is still worthy of the shame it once held. The current playoff format began in 1994, but the strike wiped out the postseason so we have to start with 1995. Since that season, no pennant-winning team has ranked higher than fifth in its league in strikeouts. But that is actually an aberration, since most pennant winners rank much lower than that.

Here are the past nine champions in each league, along with their league rank in strikeouts that season:

Of the 36 AL playoff teams since 1995, only eight ranked in the top 5 in strikeouts. Fourteen ranked in the bottom five.

In the NL, 23 of the 36 playoff teams ranked in the lower half of the league in K's. The league champion with the highest ranking in K's was San Diego in 1998 (eighth out of 16 teams). The 1995 Braves ranked ninth out of 14 teams.

In a way, it's not that surprising, really. After all, good teams have good hitters, and good hitters don't strike out that much. But it is worth bringing up since so much of the hubbub in baseball recently has been about the importance of on-base percentage. On-base percentage is a critical stat because it shows how often a player does not make an out. If you have a lineup of players who don't make outs very often, you are going to score a ton of runs. There is no arguing with that.

But how a team makes its outs can be an important statistic, too. If a club is striking out a high rate, then it is not getting anything productive from those outs. Think back to this postseason, when a handful of games -- Game 5 of Red Sox-A's and Game 4 of Yankees-Marlins come to mind right off the bat -- came down to somebody having to put a ball in play. They didn't have to get a hit or a home run or even a walk. They just had to put the bat on the ball and hope it went to the right place.

This isn't to say you have to play smallball and lay down meek little bunts all over the place. But it is to say that putting the ball in play, whether its a fly out or a grounder to first, in most cases is better than a whiff. (Unless you hit into a double play, of course. That is the one positive thing about a strikeout.) And this isn't to say that low strikeout rates are the only reasons these teams won pennants. Pitching usually has a lot to do with that. But it is a common factor among these championship ballclubs.

Filling your team with strikeout artists -- like the Brewers and Reds have been doing the past few years -- is like deciding to eat fast food every day. You're gonna load up on empty calories.

With the massive amounts of activity set to happen in the Hot Stove League, many general managers will have a chance to change the basic composition of their lineups. Recent history shows it would behoove them to try to minimize strikeouts wherever they can.

Jacob Luft covers baseball for SI.com.