Hitters say, oh K

When I played little league, striking out was embarassing. If you got sat down on 3 strikes, you took the walk of shame and sat alone at the end of the bench. Well, in the major leagues, that attitude is no more.

Ryan Howard struck out 199 times last season to set the major league record in K's. This is a record that has been broken three times in the last four years (Twice by Adam Dunn, now thats something to be proud of).

So with this, it seemed that some research was in order.

First off, at Howard's current pace, (510 K's in 423 games) he could break Reggie Jackson's record 2597 strike outs in around 500 less games...pathetic.

In 2007, only three NL and five AL teams failed to strike out 1000 times. In 1965 (a year that Koufax sat down 382) only six teams in the entire league were over the 1 grand mark.

As resently as 1991, only 8 teams were over a thousand strike outs. So what the hell happened in the last 15 years?

The idea of awarding power over contact, defense and baseball IQ leaves us with Ryan Howard winning the 2006 MVP over Albert Pujols (49 HRs, 51 K's and a gold glove) and players like Alex Rodriguez being dubbed the best in the game (120 K's in 07)

Old Joe Sewell would turn in his grave. The man struck out just 4 times in over 608 AB's in 1925


It should be mentioned that Sal Fasano K'd 310 times in just 1063 major league ab's....