On strikeouts, graphics, and gratuitous Dragon Warrior references

A mixture of conventional reasons for the rise in strikeouts and my own thoughts:

A. Batters aren't taught as much to "just make contact" with two strikes - there' s much less going the other way, defensive hitting, etc. Hardly anyone chokes up to punch a ball over the infield on 0-2 anymore. Getting a strikeout in the old days was something like beating an enemy in RPG who's constantly guarding; you can do it, but it takes forever and you wish you could have just used some magic to finish them off. (Walter Johnson chanted the spell of HURTMORE. *flash of glorious NES light* The George Sisler took 50 damage. Thou hast done well in defeating the George Sisler. Thy experience increases by 40. Thy GOLD increases by 197.)

2. Strikeouts aren't the stigma they once were for batters - sort of the flipside of A.

III. Back in "the day," there was usually a batter not far removed from the pitcher in terms of offense. Eddie Perez was the norm, Javy Lopez the exception; Jeff Blauser most years was the norm, Jeff Blauser in contract years the exception. Normally, pitchers - who were trying to complete whatever they started, which of course took a lot of pitches - conserved their energy on the banjo hitters, just pitching to contact and not that hard to get an easy out. Nowadays, there aren't many lineups (other than the Astros') that afford such easy outs. Going through two more real, non-Ausmus hitters means they're actually dangerous when they hit, so you might aim for the strikeout there.

Quatre. Along with that change has come bullpens so starting pitchers don't have to conserve energy that much. Why bother turning into Kirk Rueter for the bottom of the order when you could strike 'em out and be done with 'em? There's no incentive not to try to strike out whoever's in front of you now.

Fifthly. Personal theory here, but Nolan Ryan made striking out batters a really awesome thing to do. Perhaps Ryan is to the K what Ruth is to the HR...? Probably not, but who knows.

Anyway, K's per game in the AL reached an league all-time high of 6.57/game (per team, so about 13 for both sides combined). The AL hit 4.5 for the first time in 1956, crossed the 5 line in 1961, and the 6 line in 1964, but when the strike zone shrank down in 1969, it took until 1994 to cross 6 again. It's been at 6 ever since. The story's similar in the NL, except that pitchers batting has upped the numbers. The NL hit 4.5 for the first time also in 1956, crossed 5 in 1958, and hit 6 in 1969 (shrunk strike zone, but the Expos and Padres for the first time to more than make up for that), hit 6 again in the mid-'80s, and then has been at 6 every year since 1994. The NL's current high is 6.98 from 2001 - over twice what it was in the '30s, and about 2.5 times what it was in the '20s.

It's not like whiffing people was the sign of a great pitcher back in the day either. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SOp9_leagues.shtml/ is the year-by-year league leaders in K/9. All the recent leaders are good pitchers (Randy Johnson/Clemens/Nolan Ryan/Smoltz in '96). Before 1922 or so, though, the list is Walter Johnson and the Randoms, and it wasn't necessarily even guys who were good that year - Doc Ayers, Eric Erickson, Hod Eller, Heinie Berger, Louis Drucke, Ben Tincup (who I presume has nothing to do with the Kevin Costner golf movie), and the immortal Buttons Briggs are just some of the illustrious strikeout artists of yesteryear. Just like doubles and triples and average were better indicators of a good year way back when than home runs, so the strikeout didn't say quite as much back then as it does now. Well, that's not quite true - the leaders in total strikeouts for a given year were usually good, although that was as much a function of pitching a gazillion innings than anything.

Extra K's of today are just a function of the style of the game changing. It's kinda like comparing an NES game (yes, I'm going there again) to a Wii game in terms of graphics and gameplay - the graphics are clearly better on the Wii, but the NES game might be as fun or more so, and might even have better graphics in context. Still, if you make a "games with best graphics" list, they're all going to be new.

(By the way, the best RPG ever is Earthbound. Feel free to disagree, as long as you know deep down in your heart that I'm right.)