Yesterday I introduced the Ryan Howard Strikeout Tracker. It's a nice little widget, and I hope you take a look at it every so often, but let's face it, no matter where that red line ends up at the end of September, it's still going to be a ton of strikeouts. One ninety-nine or two-twenty, whatever, it's still a hit, pardon the pun, or "anti-pun", to your offense.
Yes, that's right, a strikeout is detrimental to a team's offense. Now, it is certainly better than a ground ball double play, but on a strikeout, if there are runners on base, which there often are for Howard, there is no opportunity for those runners to advance.
For example, let's say Jimmy Rollins triples to lead off an inning. Shane Victorino then pops up to the infield and Chase Utley walks, bringing Howard to the plate with one out. A strikeout leaves Rollins at third, but while it's not sexy, if Howard just grounds out to the right of second base, Rollins is able to score.
So when Ryan Howard tries to tell you that the league leaders in strikeouts undeservedly get more attention than the leaders in groundouts... well, there's a reason for that Big Guy.
But rather than quibble over the merits of a strikeout versus a ground out, whaddya say we try and get to the bottom of why Howard is striking out? In Part II, we'll examine Pitch f/x statistics to hopefully find out why Howard is having problems.
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Update: Howard is 3-3 tonight through 5 innings with a double and a home run. His average is up to .209 now, maybe I won't need to write Part II.
