The strikeout as an offensive weapon

Tim Brown at Yahoo Sports has a recent article on Arizona Diamondbacks free-swinging third baseman Mark Reynolds who set the major league record for strikeouts in a season last year with 204 and is on pace to strike out 220 times this year.

The article contains this gem of a quote from Reynolds: "I don't see how it's such a bad thing. Whoever made that up*, that it's such a bad thing to strike out, is full of crap."

I guess the strikeout gets a bad rap and really needs a new press agent! And all these years we thought a strikeout was bad!

Though he doesn't come right out and say it, I am guessing that Reynolds is saying that 202 strikeouts is an acceptable trade-off for the 38 home runs that he hit last year. For Reynolds, there is no such thing as shortening the swing with two strikes, going with the pitch, hitting to the opposite field, moving along runners etc. Doing all this would interfere with his ability to hit home runs. He can do that one thing well so his development as a player is essentially over.

Reynolds only hit .239 last year and he is not considered to be a good defensive player so aside from his marginal speed (22 stolen bases this year so far), his power is all that he really brings to the table. Probably a step above Rob Deer and Pete Incaviglia but not much (though I do see that Reynolds is bringing his average up this year). He also does not walk a lot like Adam Dunn who is another high strikeout guy but walks a ton which mitigates the strikeouts quite a bit. With Reynolds, do you carry a guy who strikes out 40% of the time so to get his 38 home runs? That is a nice figure but not an enormous amount of home runs.

I think Ted Williams is the pretty much the gold standard for hitting. Would Williams who struck out an average of 38 times a year approve of this new theory which elevates strikeouts to the level of "not a bad thing"? I think we know the answer to that.**

*Nobody really needed to "make it up" as it is kind of an obvious truth.

**Yes, I know that we would have to unfreeze Ted and have him reassembled to get the definitive answer but work with me here, ok?