I just figured it out.

Earlier in the blog entry, he refers correctly to Matt Downs.

That seems to me to be a pretty flawed argument:

not swinging at pitcher’s pitches, such as pitches on the corners, is just as good a way to get out via the strikeout as getting on base.

This is true if, and only if, a majority of all ABs include only perfect pitchers pitches. As the key to good plate discipline is to swing at pitches you can hit hard, you only get into two strikes counts in one of two ways: 1) the pitcher hasn’t thrown a good pitch to hit while making at least two very good corner pitches; or 2) the pitcher has thrown good pitches to hit but the batter wasn’t able to take advantage (this falls under Irwin’s comment below of just not being a very good hitter. In Noonan’s case, we know he’s a good hitter so we don’t need ot worry too much about htis). Once you’re in a two-strike AB of course, a batter with good plate discipline will have to go in the classic grinder mode and try to spoil pitches he recognizes could be strikes. He may put one of these into play, but the attempt is really to foul them off and live to see another pitch and hopefully get the count back in his favor, because as the old truism goes, the longer an AB continues the more it favors the hitter.

But your statement that only swinging at hitters pitches is “just as good a way to get out” as getting on base, is only true (as I said above) if the vast majority of pitches are “pitchers pitches” (more than 3 an AB, since many balls are also pitchers pitches). This isn’t true at the major league level—it certainly isn’t true in the Sally where few pitchers have command and even fewer have secondary pitches of any quality.

As an aside, I should also note that if Noonan’s swinging in an attempt to avoid striking out, he’s not succeeding—his 84 Ks are actually fairly high (about 20% of his ABs).

Like many people who make hypothetical anecdotal arguments (ie, “in one isolated type of AB this would harm you), you’re essentially denying that hundreds of repetitions of an event, leave behind an accumulated wealth of behavioral evidence - which is all statistics are. If you have good strike zone discipline, over the course of 5 months and 500 ABs you are going to accumulate some amount of walks (more than say 0.04 of the time). A very good hitter with very good plate discipline is likely to walk nearly as much as or more than he strikes out. If you look at the top of the Sally walk lists, for instance, you’ll notice that of lot of these guys who have 400% more walks than Nick, have BB/K rates in the 1:1.3 to 1:1 range. Not all of them but a lot of them: (63:93, 60:66, 58:79, 56:52, 55:54 - that’s 5 of the top 7 walkers in the league)

There are certainly other stats that would help focus on the issue of strike zone discipline as well. Particularly, I’d love to be able to look at Noonan’s numbers on 1 and 2 pitch ABs. A good hitter with good plate discipline should have exceptional numbers in these ABs. There also shouldn’t be many of them, as you should never ever have a 1 pitch AB in the first half of the game.

Kruk and Kuip were talking about that the other day, how they still can’t get use to the sight of players making one pitch outs, especially the first time through. In their day, and really any time in baseball history up through the 80s, that would immediately lead ot a kangaroo court fine. In fact, it’s this (and not as was suggested in another thread the other day, changing speed and spotting pitches around the zone) that’s responsible for the incredible career of Jaime Moyer. Moyer knows perfectly well that he can’t get hitters out with his 76 mile an hour stuff if he throws strikes. And so he doesn’t! He’s stubborn and persistent, and he knows perfectly well that on many many days he can stand out there and throw pitch after pitch 5 inches outside the strike zone (mixing in an occasional inside curve ball to keep hitters back a little bit) and whole teams will retire themselves (or at least a critical mass of players on a team, it’s okay to walk a lot of people, if 4 or 5 guys in the lineup consistently get themselves out).

And that’s really the issue for me—this isn’t some new statistical fetish (and the hyperbolic rant below that I are anybody thinks Walks are more important than HRs, Ks, what have you is just fatuous, it’s an important element in a large stew of elements and I don’t know of anybody around here who claims more for it), it’s the way baseball is supposed ot be played and has been lost in the Sportscenter generation (much like, I’d argue, the jump shot has been lost in basketball).

So, here’s what walks mean:

1) Walks have a direct, provable, and even statistically measurable correlation to scoring runs. (that a fan who watched the effects of Bonds 200+ walks on the Giants offenses doesn’t grasp that is beyond me).

2) They add to pitchers pitch counts, tiring them and making them reveal their repertoire, and put them in stretches. From a team standpoint, long ABs get you into your opponents bullpen earlier in the game, which is where every team’s soft underbelly lies (great offensive teams have been using this approach for decades, last place teams tend to have a lineup of players who are doing there own thing up at the plate).

3) As such they are a fundamental aspect of good team play. Batters who make 1 or 2 pitch outs are not only being unproductive, they are being selfish (indeed, this used to be the most important indicator of a selfish player) because they’re not using their ABs to help their teammates develop their own approaches to the day’s pitcher.

4) And anecdotally, as said above, baseball knowledge says longer ABs favor batters and shorter ones favor pitchers (for some obvious common sense reasons). So developing the habit of creating longer ABs (part of which is definitely not being afraid of two strike counts and pitchers pitches), has the favorable ramification of frequently putting you in ABs that favor you and not him.

And, one more aside, Adam Witter (and really Antoan Richardson) is a pretty good example for exactly the way that I don’t take it to mean things it doens’t mean. If Witter could be expected to be exactly the player at the major league level that he has been in AA and even A ball, then yes he could be a very productive player just as you say - because he can walk and hit some homers (and he may end up being that useful player). But it’s other stats (including - horrors! BA) that suggest that he’s really just a cripple killer, and his contact problems and swing holes would be exploited to such an extent at the majors (where you see the same guys over and over for years on end and they all know your weaknesses) that he wouldn’t be able to translate his AA numbers into any acceptable major league performance.