FanHouse

Saber Bombs are MLB FanHouse's introduction to sabermetrics, those new and sometimes unwieldy metrics that are changing the way we think about baseball. Each post highlights a specific stat, player, team or media member either embodying that understanding, or missing the boat completely.

One great and entirely overlooked aspect of sabermetrics is that it's not all just newfangled stats that are hard for the casual fan to understand. They can just as easily take a look at what seems to be a common baseball truth and see if there's actually any truth behind it. That's what makes this Hardball Times article about swinging at strikes so great. Swinging at strikes is a basic baseball tenant, but haven't you ever wondered just how important it is? (Warning: if you haven't, just stop reading now.)

Common sense says it's best to swing at strikes and not at balls. But it's not always that easy. You don't have to listen hard to hear someone complain about a star player "walking too much." In general it happens when they draw a walk in a big situation where a hit would drive in key runs (think Alex Rodriguez in October or JD Drew at every stop along the way before Boston). Just how much value is there in swinging at strikes? Find out after the jump.
The answer is a lot more than you probably realize. Here are a couple of THT's main findings:

• Hitters are two-and-a-half times more likely to swing and miss a ball than they are to swing and miss at a strike. Maybe that seems insignificant to you, but think of the difference over 600 at-bats.
  
• BABIP (batting average on balls put in play, or at-bats that don't end in a walk, strikeout, or home run) for strikes put into play is .300 and for balls put into play is .263. I don't have to tell you that's a big difference.
  

Here's a case where numbers confirm common sense. Not only is it MUCH easier to hit a strike, more good things happen when you put a strike into play. There is no good excuse to ever swing at a ball, even if it's a pitch the batter thinks he can hit (and if you're going to use Vladimir Guerrero as an argument against that statement, go back and read the whole article). And the next time you hear someone criticize a good hitter for being "too passive" and talking a walk, you know where to tell them to stick it.