Photo by Keith Allison via Flickr

Mickey Mantle once noted that between his walks and his strikeouts, he played roughly seven seasons worth of games without hitting the ball. Throw in his home runs, and 40 percent of his career plate appearances ended without him putting the ball in play. Considering our modern disdain for Three-True-Outcome players, it’s kind of weird Mantle is so beloved.

For instance, consider how much hate current Yankees star Aaron Judge gets for his hitting style. People are dazzled by the homers, but they can’t stop criticizing the strikeouts ­– and based on how many people pointed to Jose Altuve’s batting average during the MVP debate, it’s safe to assume they’re not thrilled with the walks.

The common sabermetric viewpoint is that the strikeouts don’t matter. But is that the case? Well, no, and I’ll explain why.

The Votto complaint

To be honest, I’m not sure if Votto-hate has died down in recent years or if I’m just seeing less. What I do know is that from 2013–2015, people couldn’t stop complaining about Votto taking too many walks. He wasn’t hitting homers like he used to, and his refusal to expand his strike zone was blamed for keeping him from 30 home runs.

One common gripe was “doesn’t he know a sac-fly is better than a walk?” This is an appealing way of thinking — I certainly fell for it back when I was in high school — but there’s a pretty simple rebuttal. “Who’s to say all those walks turned into outs will result in runs being scored?”

Yeah, maybe Votto could turn a few walks into sacrifice outs, but he would probably turn even more walks into shallow fly-balls that can’t move the runner, or possibly double plays, or even empty-bases outs. Yes, a sac-fly is nice, but you can’t assume that would be the result.

The same logic applies to strikeouts. Yes, a player who hits .300/.400/.500 with 200 strikeouts is just as good as the player who hits .300/.400/.500 with 50 strikeouts. If the season is over, and you’re using strikeouts to argue that a player wasn’t the MVP, you’re not making a good argument.

But if the season is about to start, and you’re arguing which player will be better, then you are absolutely justified in bringing up strikeouts.

The Springer exception

Now, some reading this may feel tempted to point out that avoiding strikeouts isn’t necessarily a good thing.

“What about George Springer?” you might say.

Springer had a strikeout-percentage of 22 percent in the first half. He hit .310/.380/.613/.993 with a 166 wRC+. In the second half he lowered his strikeout-percentage to 11 percent, and hit .241/.347/.377/.724 with a 101 wRC+. It would appear that whatever changes he made to reduce his strikeouts had a negative effect on his swing, and his numbers suffered.

Is the same true for Judge though? Well his worst months in terms of strikeout-percentage were July and August. As you may have heard, Judge struggled a bit during that time period. It seems that Judge is just a big guy with a big strike zone — there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of hitters his size after all. Furthermore, as we saw in the playoffs, he’s not that good at hitting sliders or other inside pitches. Taken together, and it seems that Judge will always struggle with strikeouts.

What could’ve been

So if Judge doesn’t have a swing like Springer that makes strikeouts a necessary evil, what would a less k-prone Judge look like?

In 2017 Judge had 208 strikeouts, while his rival Altuve only struck-out 84 times. Let’s say Judge also struck out 84 times. Now he has an extra 124 plate appearances to play around with. Assuming Judge maintains his rate stats in these plate appearances, he’s going hit a lot better than the .000/.000/.000 slash line he put up in the real world.

Judge had an 18.7 BB% in 2017. So that makes 23 of his new plate appearances walks — obviously I’m rounding here — giving him 150 walks for the season. Assuming no hit-by-pitches or errors occurred in the remaining plate appearances, we’re left with 101 at-bats.

Judge had one home run every 10.4 AB. That gives him 10 extra home runs, for a season total of 62. This would be the new AL record, and would also be considered by many the new single season record. If you thought the debate over Stanton “breaking the record” was fun, imagine if someone actually did it and we had to have that discussion all offseason long.

With the remaining 91 AB, Judge’s .357 BABIP would give him 32 more hits. I’m just going to assume they’re all singles, because it’s easier that way.

With 42 more hits — 10 homers and 32 singles — and 23 more walks, Aaron Judge would now have a .362/.518/.760 triple slash line. That Bondsian slash line, combined with the controversial new home run record, would have made Judge the unanimous MVP.

A big if and an obvious but

As I said, Judge will probably always be strikeout prone. In 2017 this didn’t prevent Judge from being an MVP candidate. The reason why should be obvious to anyone who read the section above. He had a .357 BABIP, hit a homer every 10.4 AB, and walked in almost a fifth of his plate appearances. If you do all that, you can give away a third of your PAs and still be very good.

But, that’s a lot easier said than done. Looking at the projection systems, Judge is expected to be worth roughly 4–5 WAR next year. That’s good, All Star caliber production, but it’s not great, and it’s certainly not MVP worthy. The reason for the drop off is clear. No one in their right mind — and no computer model in its right circuitry — would project Judge to repeat that BABIP, or that BB%, or that home run rate, let alone all three.

An out is an out, that’s true — although strikeouts are boring and fascist — but a walk is a walk, a home run is a home run, and a ball in play can be just about anything. If Aaron Judge wants to stay elite while doing the latter three at a more human level, he needs to reduce how often he does the former.