Cleveland’s Rotation and the Holy Grail of Strikeouts

In absolute terms, we know that strikeouts are at an all-time high. We see it in box scores, talking heads consistently discuss and lament the phenomenon on broadcasts, and in truth, it’s been going on for years. We’re left to wonder and analyze where the ceiling is for this trend, and exactly where the line between passable and unacceptable strikeout totals for batters begins and ends. For pitchers — whose velocity is a main factor in the increased strikeout numbers — going to work must be that much more enjoyable. And, in 2015, it was most enjoyable in terms of strikeouts for the rotations of the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians.

If we look at strikeout rates for individual team seasons over the course of baseball history, no one struck out batters at a higher clip than the rotations of the 2015 Indians (24.2%) and 2015 Cubs (23.9%). That isn’t really surprising given the strikeout trend of recent years, but in mid-June of last season, the Indians’ rotation was actually on pace for the third-highest league-adjusted strikeout rate since 1950. At that point in time, they were striking out a historic rate of batters in a historic strikeout period, which is the sort of thing that tends to lend itself to positive team results. It didn’t, but most of that wasn’t the rotation’s fault (hello, team defense!), and the ridiculous strikeout pace didn’t quite continue into the second half of the season.

In the end, they finished as the 41st-best league-adjusted strikeout rotation, which really isn’t too bad: they ended up striking out almost 27% more batters than the league average starting rotation in 2015. Here’s the 2015 Indians compared to the best 15 league-adjusted strikeout rotations since 1950 by K%+ (percentage points above average compared to a given year’s league average strikeout rate):

In case you’re wondering, the 2015 Cubs finished 105th-best, with a K%+ rate of 120. Also not bad, but it’s illustrative of just how many strikeouts a team has to amass to make a run at breaking the record. And so I wondered: what strikeout rate would it take in 2016 to break the league-adjusted rate? And do the Cubs or Indians (or another rotation) have any realistic shot at breaking it?

First, let’s attempt to determine what strikeout rate a rotation would have to reach in order to beat the record, currently held by the 1990 New York Mets. The ’90 Mets had Dwight Gooden and David Cone (223 and 233 strikeouts, respectively), and they were backed up by Frank Viola (182) and Sid Fernandez (181). Having the first four starters on a team each average 200 strikeouts would be incredible in this day and age (something the 2015 Indians actually did), but it was completely ridiculous in 1990. By absolute numbers, they had four of the top-11 strikeout pitchers that season. Strictly for fun, if we assembled a fake rotation with 2015 starters who finished with the same strikeout ranks as the 1990 Mets, this would be the four guys in the rotation: Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Carlos Carrasco, and James Shields.

As you can see in the chart above, the 1990 Mets struck out 47% more batters than the league average rotation that year (21.3% to 14.5%). What would a rotation in 2016 need to do to beat that? Let’s work it out. Over the past 30 years, strikeout rates for starting rotations have increased by 0.2% per year, on average. If we look at just the last 10 years, that figure is just over 0.3%, and we’ve had a few jumps of 0.5% and over during the past five years. For our purposes, let’s say the strikeout madness continues, and both leagues see increases of .4%. That would put 2016 strikeout rates at 19.5% for the American League and 20.3% for the National League. So, to post a strikeout rate that is at the level of the 1990 Mets (47% over average) when adjusted for the league, a starting rotation would have to strike out:

Sheesh. This starts to get into the territory about which we were wondering earlier: where’s the ceiling, both for batters and pitchers? The 2015 Indians struck out almost 27% of batters through April and May of last season, but they started tailing off fairly quickly after that. Could a rotation possibly record a figure greater than 28.6% for an entire season?

To postulate, let’s employ some projections! We know a few things about projections: they cause a lot of disagreement. People enjoy yelling about them. They’re not perfect. We know all of these things. And yet we will employ them happily here, because it is March and we are dreaming of real baseball games; we will trust in our friend Dan Szymborski and his all-knowing spreadsheets, and we will be glad for it. To that end, I’ve taken ZiPS projections of the projected top-four starters for each team (projecting fifth starters is obviously difficult at this stage of the season), and averaged their strikeout rates to see who our top projected rotations are. There will be playing time changes, and there will be injuries, but this is the best information we currently have, and we’re having fun. Here is a chart of no small stature that shows the result of this work:

Projected 2016 Rotation Strikeout Rates

Team	Top Four Starters	Projected Team K%
Indians	Kluber, Salazar, Carrasco, Bauer	25.8%
Dodgers	Kershaw, Maeda, Kazmir, Ryu	24.9%
Mets	deGrom, Harvey, Syndergaard, Matz	24.9%
Nationals	Scherzer, Strasburg, Gonzalez, Roark	24.6%
White Sox	Sale, Quintana, Rodon, Danks	22.9%
Reds	DeSclafani, Lamb, Iglesias, Finnegan	22.4%
Cubs	Lester, Arrieta, Lackey, Hendricks	22.3%
Rays	Archer, Odorizzi, Smyly, Ramirez	22.3%
Giants	Bumgarner, Cueto, Samardzija, Peavy	22.2%
Padres	Shields, Ross, Maurer, Cashner	22.1%
Astros	Keuchel, McHugh, Fiers, McCullers	21.8%
Yankees	Tanaka, Severino, Eovaldi, Pineda	21.7%
Mariners	Hernandez, Miley, Iwakuma, Walker	21.6%
Rangers	Hamels, Darvish, Perez, Holland	20.9%
Diamondbacks	Greinke, Miller, Ray, Corbin	20.8%
Red Sox	Price, Rodriguez, Porcello, Buchholz	20.6%
Braves	Teheran, Wisler, Norris, Banuelos	20.3%
Marlins	Fernandez, Chen, Cosart, Conley	20.2%
Pirates	Cole, Liriano, Locke, Niese	20.2%
Brewers	Jungmann, Nelson, Anderson, Garza	19.7%
Tigers	Verlander, Zimmermann, Sanchez, Norris	19.7%
Angels	Richards, Heaney, Santiago, Weaver	19.5%
Cardinals	Leake, Martinez, Wainwright, Wacha	19.5%
Phillies	Nola, Eickhoff, Harang, Hellickson	19.0%
Royals	Volquez, Ventura, Duffy, Medlen	18.6%
Orioles	Jimenez, Gausman, Gonzalez, Tillman	18.4%
Blue Jays	Estrada, Stroman, Dickey, Happ	18.1%
Rockies	de la Rosa, Gray, Bettis, Lyles	17.8%
Athletics	Gray, Graveman, Bassitt, Hahn	17.5%
Twins	Hughes, Gibson, Santana, Milone	17.4%

SOURCE: FanGraphs/ZiPS

Team starters are based on recent best available depth charts/playing time.
Projected K% is based on weighted average of individual innings pitched/K%.

Based on projections, Cleveland will have to outperform their strikeout rate by almost three percentage points if they’re going to challenge the 1990 Mets. That doesn’t seem likely, but crazier things have happened, and the ’90 Mets no doubt shocked baseball when they compiled their ridiculous campaign. We’d have to think Trevor Bauer would need to take a major step forward in 2016 to have any chance of the Indians making a run at the record, which isn’t exactly the most far-fetched of ideas: Bauer had three 10-plus strikeout games in the first two months of the 2015 season. The talent is there — as it always has been — but up until now, getting everything working at the same time has been a struggle for him.

There’s also the simple thought that we might be approaching a kind of super saturation related to strikeouts. At what point do strikeout rates stop increasing? At what point must they stop increasing? It seems like there must be a cap to the trend, and if in fact we have reached that cap, posting the kind of above-average outlier season needed to break this strikeout record is going to be incredibly difficult. One thing the Indians have going for them: for two months last season, they were there, posting video-game numbers. We know they’re capable of it for short periods of time. Lots of incredible things are possible in baseball during short periods of time. And, because it’s March, we can dream.