Strikeouts are a key outcome that can impact the course of a game during any at-bat, whether you’re a hitter or a pitcher. We can also dive deeper into how often either a player strikes out or gets strikeouts which helps us measure their impact on the field.
K% Explained
K%, or strikeout rate, is a statistic that measures the percentage of strikeouts compared to the number of plate appearances.
For hitters, strikeouts are one of the least desirable outcomes because they don’t lead to any batted balls being put into the field of play. A batter who records excessive strikeouts hinders their overall ability to be productive. And the more a hitter strikes out, the fewer opportunities they’ll have to give their team a chance to score runs.
Conversely, for pitchers, strikeouts are an extremely favorable outcome. For the exact opposite reasons for a hitter, a pitcher who can limit baserunners and strike out hitters will do a great job of preventing runs.
As we have learned from our videos on ERA or BABIP, batted balls can sometimes be random. The more balls hit in play, the more vulnerable a pitcher is to giving up hits, errors, or just potentially being on the wrong side of “luck.”
This is why it can be important for pitchers to limit contact, and ultimately, measure the number of strikeouts they produce. The higher the K%, the more “control” they may have over their own success.
For both hitters and pitchers, K% is simply calculated as strikeouts divided by plate appearances:
K% = # of strikeouts / # of PA
It’s important to note that there are other metrics, such as strikeouts per 9, or K/9 for short, that measure strikeout ability. However, K% is an important metric because it is a more accurate reflection of a pitcher’s ability to strikeout batters because it quantifies the rate of strikeouts against the number of plate appearances instead of on an inning-by-inning basis.
For example, two pitchers could have the same K/9 rate, but might have faced a different total number of hitters in a 9-inning game, and thus, have a very different K%.
Summary
Strikeouts are crucial for both pitchers and hitters in baseball and they can be an important element in identifying a player’s skill. At any level, you’ll want to monitor the rates at which players produce this type of outcome.
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