How many strikeouts is too many, and MLB's next big thing

Every year, baseball's strikeout rate increases. That much we know. What we haven't thought about as much is the victim of the strikeout pandemic: balls in play. Without balls in play, we can't have hits. Never has this simple observation been more relevant.

Inevitably, we would reach a month like April 2018. For the first time in history, we will have a full month of big league baseball with more strikeouts than hits. Through Thursday's games, there were 6,003 hits this season and 6,392 strikeouts. We are all but certain to record an ignominious inversion of whiffs and knocks.

This is not good for the game. That's subjective, of course. Maybe you love the strikeouts or consider them a worthy trade-off for more homers, or you simply consider it to be smart baseball. Still, even for those who have no problem with the current levels, I must pose a question: How many strikeouts are too many?

There has to be an upper limit before the spread of strikeouts begins to drive away fans, right? Taken to an extreme, nobody would want to watch a game in which a ball in play is as startling as a goal in soccer. You can get into the "an out is an out" debate and point to run expectation tables that show a whiff is often better than a ball in play because you avoid a double play. You can draw positive correlations among strikeouts, walks and homers.

But none of that is the context by which I'm posing the "how many are too many" question. I'm not worried about quantitative arguments regarding the best way to score runs; I'm worried about a game that could eventually become unwatchable.

We're not there yet. Yes, attendance is down this season, though when you look at the cities that have seen increases versus those that have had declines, weather and widespread rebuilding seem like Occam's razor explanations, not mass rejection caused by on-field trends.

So the concern isn't about where the game is but where it might be going. Strikeouts have increased to a record 8.85 whiffs per game so far this season. That's hardly news: We've set a new standard for swinging at air every season since 2008. If this continues, it leads to a troubling vision of what the game might look like in a few years.

Last week the Cardinals played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Over the first 1½ innings -- roughly 36 minutes of real-world time --13 batters came to the plate. Eight of them struck out, three walked, one was hit by a pitch and one put a fair ball into play. For the game, which lasted 3 hours, 33 minutes, there were 23 strikeouts, 16 walks and two hit batters. The Cardinals had two assists, one of which came on a sacrifice bunt. Two assists!

That contest might have been an extreme example, but it wasn't exactly out of place by 2018 standards. The notion of these kinds of stagnant sequences growing more common is frightening.

Baseball has been played at extremes -- in different ways -- many times through its history. The major league batting average in 1968 was .237, the lowest ever. (A mark that, given current trends, will fall within a couple of years. It is .242 so far in 2018.) In 1930, it was .296.

Things are cyclical. Baseball is often self-correcting, though sometimes it takes an external nudge like lowering the mound, calling more high strikes or surreptitiously introducing a livelier ball. The game always seems to regain its balance one way or another. You could look at the history of the seasons as being a continual, slow transition from one extreme to another.

When it comes to strikeouts, however, I'm not sure this will be a self-correcting issue. Eventually, a nudge might be needed, though it's unclear what form that might take.

A few years ago, baseball statistician Bill James posited that there are two reasons strikeout rates have always had a generally upward trend line, despite periodic ebbs and flows: (1) Strikeout pitchers are better than non-strikeout pitchers and (2) strikeout hitters are paradoxically better than non-strikeout hitters because of the trade-offs in power and patience. From those starting points, the marketplace takes over and drives the evolution of the product.

With the rise of analysis, these trends have accelerated. This season strikeouts per game are up 7.5 percent over last season. If that continues, it would be the largest year-to-year increase in 32 years and the seventh largest of the live ball era (since 1920). And this is a near-record increase on an already existing record. Oakland's Jed Lowrie summed it up in some comments to The Athletic: As long as teams are paying for strikeouts and homers (and the whiffs that come with them), this is going to continue.

So where can we turn to stem this tide of strikeouts? My hope is the Houston Astros.

Last season the Astros won the World Series on the strength of baseball's best offense. They finished just behind the Yankees for the most homers in baseball. They walked at about a league-average rate. But the Astros also put the ball in play, hitting a big-league-best .282 and striking out 66 fewer times than any other team.

Houston showed us that to field an attack that stands out, you need more than the homers and walks that most offenses now have almost by default. The truly dynamic offense combines those things with bat-to-ball skills, situational hitting and impact baserunning. Maybe homers, strikeouts and walks have historically tracked well with scoring, but historically, we've been looking at them in conjunction with other traits, not in the absence of them.

If the top offenses continue to demonstrate the payoffs of well-rounded attacks, then perhaps the marketplace will start valuing skills that aren't captured in the three true outcomes (TTO) -- particularly if TTO skills become a virtual prerequisite to playing in the majors. If everyone has them, then it's the other stuff that will separate the wheat from the chaff. We can only hope.

How many strikeouts are too many? I can't really answer the question. I just hope we never find out.

What the numbers say:

Chasing the problem

Sticking with the strikeouts theme, we saw league-level records set last season for both strikeouts per nine innings and homers per nine innings. However, the walk rate ranked just 42nd among live ball seasons. What we've seen isn't so much an explosion of the three true outcomes but more of a collective all-or-nothing approach.

That would be defensible if it tracked with increased run-scoring levels, but it really doesn't. Runs were up last season because of the home run surge, reaching 4.65 per game. That was the highest level since 2008. However, that number ranks just 33rd in history. Tops in homers. Tops in strikeouts. Thirty-third in runs. Clearly, there are more things to scoring than swinging big.

And batters are swinging bigger than ever. The percentage of pitches put into play has dropped from 42 percent in 2009 to 37.3 percent so far this season. Some reasons that do not explain this:

• There are not fewer strikes to swing at. Over the past decade, the percentage of total strikes has been 63.4 percent. Last season it was 63.5. The year-to-year fluctuation has been minimal, which also is the case for pitches in the strike zone.

• Hitters are not swinging more infrequently. Last season batters swung at 46.8 percent of offerings. The 10-year rate is 46 percent.

• Hitters are not fouling off fewer pitches. The year-to-year change in this metric is minuscule.

• Hitters are not taking more strikes. This rate has remained steady year in, year out at around 32 percent.

Chase rates have remained fairly steady, until this season. We'll see if this trend holds up, but this year batters have chased 26.9 percent of pitches out of the zone. The 10-year rate is 28.3 percent, and it has never dropped below 27.5. This enhanced discipline could partly explain the drop in balls in play ... if it was a trend that had surfaced before this season.

No, the bigger culprit is contact rate, the biggest loser of the swing-from-the-heels epic. The 10-year rate for swinging and missing is 22.3 percent. But it has gone from 20.4 percent in 2009 to 25.4 percent so far this season.

Why? It seems unlikely that batters are less capable of putting the bat on the ball than they were 10 years ago. Instead, it's more likely that contact rate continues to become less of a priority, replaced by homers, exit velocities and barrels. Big swings, big misses.

Since you asked:

The rookie pitcher you have to see

One of the more interesting rookies in baseball is Cardinals reliever Jordan Hicks. He's one of those out-of-nowhere stories that grab people almost every season.

Entering the season, Hicks, 21, was squarely on the prospect radar, but no one thought he would reach St. Louis this soon -- not even the Cardinals, who initially farmed him out near the end of spring training only to reverse course right before the start of the season.

The change of heart is easy to understand. So far this season, only the Yankees' Aroldis Chapman has a higher average fastball velocity than Hicks' 97.9 mph. He clearly has won over St. Louis manager Mike Matheny: So far, only eight pitchers have faced more hitters in high-leverage situations. If you look at the list, you might also notice that those ahead of him are considerably older and that he has held opposing hitters to 1-for-23 in those spots.

"There is a disposition on the mound, a confidence, and then there is execution. But talent trumps all. You talk about high velocity, but the thing I talk about is the amount of movement with that velocity. He can control the strike zone. And he's pretty fearless in how he goes about his business." Cardinals manager Mike Matheny on rookie flamethrower Jordan Hicks

Hicks is fun to watch. When the bases are empty, he uses an old-school high leg kick and has a rapid delivery out of which his triple-digit heaters come spinning like Tasmanian devils. Yet the command issues the prospect gurus said needed to be ironed out in the minors remain. Hicks has just six strikeouts this season against 10 walks.

So why did the Cardinals allow this Nuke LaLoosh character to skip so many minor league levels? I asked Matheny about it earlier this season.

When a kid comes up throwing as hard as he does, do you have to kind of watch him to make sure he handles it right and doesn't try to live up to the radar readings?

Matheny: Oh, yeah. With all of our guys. No matter what age they come up, a lot of the attention can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time. But he's got as many people that I've ever seen around a young player. When you bring in a 21-year-old guy, our antenna is up as far as the challenges that come with any player at this level, much less those so young. You just try to keep putting him into positions to succeed on the field -- and off.

The velocity speaks for itself, but what else did you see from him that made you think he was ready to make such a drastic leap?

Matheny: We didn't see him much last year. He wasn't in camp with us. He was barely in camp with us this year. But there is a disposition on the mound, a confidence, and then there is execution. But talent trumps all. You talk about high velocity, but the thing I talk about is the amount of movement with that velocity. He can control the strike zone. And he's pretty fearless in how he goes about his business.

Do you recall having any kind of special reaction when you first watched him throw?

Matheny: We have a number of kids with good arms, so it's not that abnormal. Good arms with that kind of movement are different. Heard enough about Jordan to know for myself that he was probably going to be pretty impressive to watch, and I wasn't disappointed.

Coming right up:

Why Pujols' 3,000th hit matters

The countdown to Albert Pujols' 3,000th hit has ticked down to six, so it could happen this week. The Angels have series at home against the Yankees and the Orioles before moving on to Seattle. With Pujols nearing history, can we agree to suspend the harping about his below-replacement WAR and his unwieldy contract? Let's focus on the career of a player about to become just the fourth to record both 3,000 hits and 600 homers.

When he gets there, Pujols will join Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki and Texas' Adrian Beltre as active players in the 3,000-hit club. Is it unusual to have three players still active after having reached 3,000 hits? Yes, it's rare.