Mailbag: free swingers

With Dusty Baker recently decrying looking strikeouts as the root of all evil, it made me wonder about them a little myself. It seems like looking K’s would indicate a more patient approach at the plate, while swinging K’s would come more from over-aggressive hackers… anyway, does THT have the capability to split K’s between looking and swinging? I’d be very interested to compare the league leaderboards in each category, or the players who have the highest fractions of their strikeouts by one mode or the other.

– Eric J.

Mike Fast: I queried my Gameday database and got the following numbers. Caveat: the Gameday database is missing a few strikeouts (about 100 on the season), so these numbers are missing a strikeout or two for a few of these players.

Here are the leaders in swinging strikeouts:
158 Ryan Howard
125 Dan Uggla
122 Jhonny Peralta
120 Adrian Gonzalez
120 Brandon Inge
119 Alfonso Soriano
118 Curtis Granderson
118 Adam Dunn
113 Delmon Young
110 Khalil Greene

And called strikeouts:
71 Jack Cust
57 Mike Cameron
52 Troy Tulowitzki
48 Pat Burrell
47 B.J. Upton
46 Adam LaRoche
46 Grady Sizemore
46 Adam Dunn
44 Ryan Zimmerman
43 Nick Markakis

Highest fraction of strikeouts swinging (40 or more K’s):
98% Vladimir Guerrero (61/62)
92% Adrian Beltre (96/104)
92% Alfonso Soriano (119/130)
91% Yuniesky Betancourt (43/47)
91% Carl Crawford (101/111)
91% A.J. Pierzynski (60/66)
91% Jose Molina (39/43)
90% Corey Patterson (57/63)
90% Scott Thorman (62/69)
90% Delmon Young (113/126)

Lowest fraction of strikeouts swinging (40 or more K’s):
35% Marco Scutaro (14/40)
38% Brian Giles (23/61)
41% Todd Linden (24/59)
44% Barry Bonds (24/54)
45% Rob Bowen (27/60)
49% Willy Taveras (27/55)
51% Josh Bard (29/57)
55% Luis Castillo (24/44)
55% Scott Spiezio (22/40)
56% Jack Cust (91/162)

I have the spreadsheet available with all the data if someone wants it.