Too Many Strikeouts for Greatness by Len Foxwell

Friday night’s 15-inning epic between the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners – which spilled over into a delirious Saturday morning – is unquestionably one of the best postseason games ever played.  It has been suggested, perhaps with more than a bit of recency bias, that it is THE greatest.

There, I disagree. To be sure, many of the elements of greatness were present. Most notably, the game’s best pitcher in Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, and a catcher – Seattle’s Cal Raleigh – has broken multiple records with his historic 60 home run season.

That said, a game that featured 37 strikeouts in 98 official at-bats – a whopping 38 percent of the total – cannot be considered the best game in October history.

For the sake of historical context, the 16-inning epic between the Astros and Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS – believed by many to be the greatest of all time – featured just 20 strikeouts in 110 official at-bats. Fewer than 20 percent. Game 7 of the 1991 World Series – my personal choice for the honor? Just 13 strikeouts in 69 at-bats – again, fewer than 20 percent. This was a game pitched by future Hall of Famers Jack Morris and John Smoltz.

There is just nothing good about this notion, promoted by analytics nerds who have never played this game, that contact is less important than launch angles and exit velocity. Or that a blizzard of strikeouts is fine, so long as they serve as bookends around an occasional tape measure home run.

We have seen, throughout this postseason—the Orion Kerkering Game in Dodger Stadium comes immediately to mind—what can happen when the batter simply puts the ball in play. A strikeout, by contrast, is a total failure because the batter isn’t even giving his opponent the chance to make a mistake. It removes the element of strategy from the game, which is abundant, making the product less exciting and, therefore, less appealing to the fans.

Len Foxwell is the principal of Tred Avon Strategies, a communications and political consulting firm in Annapolis.  A Johns Hopkins lecturer and HopStart director, Len previously served as Chief of Staff to Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Salisbury University, where he also served as Special Assistant to the President.