Crash Davis was wrong. Strikeouts are neither boring, nor fascist. They’re vital.
“[E]xtensive research…shows that the vast majority of pitchers wind up giving up hits on about 30 percent of balls in play over the course of their careers.”
I did a little algebra. For the sake of discussion assume nine innings with no walks or home runs.
First case. No strike outs. 38 balls put into play. 27 outs. But 11 hits (38 X .3). Eleven hits is a lot of hits. Has to be more than one hit in some inning(s). That probably means runs scored.
But say you strike out 10. Then only 34 hitters come up. 10 strike outs. 17 fielding outs. 7 get hits (24 X .3). Seven hits are fewer than one an inning. The seven could be all in one inning, but the chances of runs scoring with 7 hits are considerably less than runs scoring with 11 hits.
Just an idle thought and a little math and not well argued. But Crash Davis was wrong.
I agree with Crash on many things, but not strike outs. And Tim Lincecum was awesome last night.
Timmeh!
It was a great game. But young Tim did almost all of the work in that win.
SFGiants bats need to wake up. One run in a game isn’t going to get them very far in the post season.
But back to Tim. It was good to see him back in form after struggling for much of the season.
The fun stat from last night is the number 33. Thirty-three times a batter swung and missed at Lincecum’s stuff. He only faced 30 batters in the entire game.