Examining Kyle Gibson’s apathy toward strikeouts

Kyle Gibson has thoughts and feelings and opinions that sound like they make sense, but they don’t. He has Reasons with a capital R that he doesn’t need strikeouts to be successful, but his Reasons don’t actually hold up. Let’s look at Gibson’s public statements and see if we can figure out what he’s really thinking.

1. “Guys who hit .300 are making outs seven out of 10 times”

Shawon Dunston once hit .300 and made an out 6.88 out of 10 times. That’s comical and also the closest anyone has ever come to the accomplishment that Gibson believes is the norm. Guys who hit .300 also draw walks, which are not outs. Guys who have an on-base percentage of .300 are making outs seven out of 10 times, but are also probably in danger of being sent to AAA. When Gibson faces Mike Trout (315 batting avg last season, 441 on-base) I hope he doesn’t think to himself, “Hey, this guy stinks, he makes outs almost seven out of 10 times!”

2. “If I’m able to keep my hard contact rate low, ground balls are almost automatic outs for me.“

Gibson is correct that ground balls turn into outs at a good clip (76% or so). That fact shouldn’t be used as an argument against strikeouts, though, since strikeouts result in an out at a much better clip - about 99.9%..

And so even though he has an above average career ground ball rate (52%), some of those balls sneak through. Even more sneak through with the Twins’ defense behind the pitcher. Gibson seems to understand this.

3. “When hitters put balls in play, they’re going to get a hit sooner or later. But if I get five ground balls in a row, I’m more than likely going to get out of the inning. Offensive numbers will tell you that. If they only get a hit three out of every ten times they put the ball in play, that’s less than two out of five, so I like my chances.”

I guess Gibson is cool with not converting batted balls into outs at an above average rate. He knows balls will drop for hits 30% of the time. And it’s comforting to him! He uses this as evidence that he has the advantage and doesn’t need to strike anyone out. Just look at Kyle’s imaginary inning - he got three outs but gave up two hits and he likes it.

Imagine a carnival game where kids shoot a basketball and win a stuffed animal if they make a basket. It’s the carnie’s job to prevent this from happening, and because this is the worst carnival game ever, he’s allowed to very easily block the shot if he so chooses. Like Mutombo against Danny DeVito or something. If it were Kyle Gibson, he’d he sit back and say, “they only make it about 30% of the time, so I like my chances. No need to block the shot.”

Front offices have reached the opposite conclusion as Gibson: why even give them a shot? Give them fewer opportunities to get lucky. In other words, try to allow fewer balls in play.

And they’ve succeeded dramatically. Balls in play are way down and strikeouts are way up and it’s become a big point in the “games are too long” debate. But from a strategic standpoint, it’s rock solid.

Putting the strategy into place involves measuring what a pitcher does apart from balls in play - homers, walks and strikeouts. But since Gibson doesn’t understand the strategy (remember, he thinks the odds are in his favor even when running a .400 BABIP), he doesn’t understand a primary measurement for putting the strategy into practice:

On succeeding with a low K-Rate: “Maybe someday someone can explain FIP and xFIP to me, and I’ll get it.”

Kyle understands pitchers don’t have much control over what happens after the ball leaves the bat. And that’s the fact that was the genesis of the stat Fielding Independent Pitching, so Kyle has a great foundation for understanding it. But because he uses the same fact to arrive at a different conclusion, he can’t wrap his mind around FIP.

4. “I’d benefit from increasing my strikeout rate, but the same time, you have to know what your strengths are. Going after strikeouts for 27 out of 27 guys isn’t my strength right now. Sure, there are times where I’d like to get more strikeouts, but 27 outs are 27 outs. Whether it’s 27 strikeouts or 27 ground balls doesn’t matter to me.”

After cutting through the hyperbole, it seems that Gibson simultaneously believes the following things:

a. I can’t get more outs via strikeout (Going after strikeouts for 27 out of 27 guys isn’t my strength right now)

b. I would benefit by getting more outs via strikeout (I’d benefit from increasing my strikeout rate)

c. It doesn’t matter to me if I get more outs via strikeout (27 outs are 27 outs. Whether it’s 27 strikeouts or 27 ground balls doesn’t matter to me)

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a. I can’t get more outs via strikeout

Let’s tackle the first one first: Is it within the realm of possibility for Kyle Gibson to increase his strikeout rate?

People who know baseball certainly seem to think so. Last year at this time, even strikeout under-rater Terry Ryan saw the K skills:

"There’s a lot of talk about his strikeouts. If you evaluate that guy pitch by pitch, he’s got three plus pitches in his approach, but you wouldn’t know it with his strikeout ratio,” Ryan said. “He’s just gotta attack the strike zone more and not nitpick. He shouldn’t be a finesse guy. He’s got stuff with a power slider, a fastball that can sit around 92-93 [miles per hour] and a good touch and feel for a change. So there’s a good chance Kyle Gibson is a guy who can take a step or two forward.”

And there have been articles written by really smart people examining his strikeout upside and saying, “he’s proven himself as a quality arm. Take a quality arm and add some extra strikeouts, and you’ve got a dominant arm. And it seems like he should be getting those extra strikeouts.”

It’s not all just potential. He has the results, too.

This excel sheet sorts every career start into one of three categories: high k%, medium k% and low k%.

Take a look at the top third by K% of his career starts - every start in which he K’d more than 17.8% of the batters he faced. In those 32 starts, he struck out an average of 24.96% batters. League average since Gibson broke in is about 20.4%.

In other words, he’s had a lot of games in which he had a high k percentage. So yes, he can do it.

I suppose the quote, “going after strikeouts for 27 out of 27 guys isn’t my strength right now.” might not mean, “I literally can’t strike out more guys”, but could be read as “If I tried something that isn’t a strength, even if I succeeded in raising my K rate, it would not benefit me overall because any gains would be negated by going away from my signature strength - inducing grounders.” If that’s what he meant, he’d obviously be contradicting himself when he said that raising his K rate would be beneficial. But furthermore, he’d be presenting an either/or type situation. As in, there’s a choice between being a groundball pitcher or a strikeout pitcher, because it’s impossible to increase one rate without decreasing the other.

Being a ground ball pitcher is part of Kyle Gibson’s identity. No one wants to lose part of their identity. Especially if they also think it will hurt their performance.

The line of thinking is this - adjusting approach to go after more swings-and-misses (whiffs) and not pitching to contact means he’d be throwing his sinker less often, meaning the success in missing bats would be offset by giving up fewer grounders when they do make contact.

Luckily, we have fangraphs correlation calculator tool so we can see if ground ball rate goes down when swinging strike rate goes up.

Not so much.

For Gibson himself, it’s a little different. Looking at the top third of starts by swinging strike rate, we see that his groundball rate doesn’t change much when he gets more whiffs, but his BABIP does.

Swinging Strike Rate - Upper Third of starts - 53.08 GB% and .312 BABIP

Swinging Strike Rate - Lower Third of starts - 51.80 GB% and .294 BABIP

On the other hand, these thirds are only composed of about 35 starts, a little more than a season’s worth of games.

Inducing grounders and suppressing BABIP isn’t the only thing to worry about. Pitchers also need to avoid giving up extra base hits. Maybe Gibson is freaked out about giving up harder hit baseballs if he tries to miss bats as opposed to throwing his sinker and going for contact, which means that even if the guy gets a hit on it, at least it won’t be for extra bases.

First, is this true generally? We’ve seen bright guys like Zack Greinke trade in swinging strikes for pitching to contact, so there must be something to it. Let’s go back to the correlation calculator and check if Isolated Slugging Percentage goes up when swinging strike rate goes up.





The opposite! This shows that improving whiff rate actually makes ISO go down, even though it’s an extremely weak correlation and we shouldn’t actually say that.

I don’t have Gibson’s ISO-against, but we can look at hard%. The top and bottom third of swinging strike rate games produced almost the same exact Hard% and GB%. So, it doesn’t seem like he has to choose between getting swings and misses or getting grounders OR avoiding hard contact.

Swinging Strike Rate - Upper Third of starts - 29.13 Hard% and 16.50 HR/FB%

Swinging Strike Rate - Lower Third of starts - 26.66 Hard% and 11.50 HR/FB%

According to our spreadsheet, Gibson’s home run per flyball does rise slightly in games where he gets more whiffs, though. Gibson’s fears that we just invented are maybe valid. Maybe he’s right to be scared that his GB% will go down and his hard% will go up resulting in both a higher BABIP and ISO against.



That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t increase his strikeout rate though. It’s pretty clear that any losses in those departments will be more than made up for by the increase in strikeouts. And he knows this.

b. I would benefit by getting more outs via strikeout

Damn right. And the proof is right there in the results. His ERA is significantly lower in games that he strikes out a higher rate of batters, which is probably mostly because he lets fewer people on base. And when they do get on, they’re stranded more often.





c. It doesn’t matter to me if I get more outs via strikeout

If this interpretation is correct and Gibson believes both B and C, then he’s admitting that he doesn’t care about getting better.

However, the actual quote is “..27 outs are 27 outs. Whether it’s 27 strikeouts or 27 ground balls doesn’t matter to me.” Maybe he’s referencing Tom Tango’s work that shows the value of a strikeout is only marginally better than a groundout. If so, he’s correct that the way he gets the outs doesn’t matter, as long as he gets them.

However, getting outs isn’t the only goal of a baseball pitcher. It’s getting outs while not giving up runs.

It’s like if your goal was to get to the top of Mount Everest and you could use a wheelchair or a jetpack. Gibson would be like, “Getting to the top of the mountain is getting to the top of the mountain. Whether it’s with a jetpack or a wheelchair doesn’t matter to me.” But it does matter because the goal isn’t just getting there, it’s also to not get frostbite on your nose and have your nose fall off because of the frostbite. Imagine Kyle Gibson saying “yeah I chose to take a wheelchair to the top of Mt. Everest when I could have taken a jetpack but the result was exactly the same” without a nose.