K's: underrated for pitchers, overrated for hitter

[Fishbone]

Stikeout Article

Baseballprospectus.com is running a series of articles introducing readers to their sabermetric concepts. This is another article describing how strikeouts aren't necessarily as evil as hitting coaches make them out to be.

[kaiser]

Not sure this article makes a great deal of sense. Seems to be saying that from a hitter's standpoint, Ks are not a big deal because it simply means an out, and not putting the ball in play to make the out doesn't matter. Fine. But from the pitcher's perspective, K's are great because they mean fewer balls put in play, so fewer potential hits.

The hitter argument assumes a ball put in play is an out. The pitcher argument assumes it's a hit, or could be.

Internally inconsistent argument.