What is the reality in Major League Baseball? First we have to define what is meant by "protecting the plate." Here is how we're looking at it. When a hitter has two strikes we consider it a failure when he does one of two things: He takes the third strike, or he swings and misses. But it's all relative and we have to adjust for that. Adam Dunn is a power hitter and he swings and misses quite often, but does he do so less often when he's protecting the plate with two strikes? To account for this, we are going to compare how hitters perform when they have two strikes compared to how they perform with less than two strikes. Here is the Major League Baseball average for 2007:
| Less Than Two Strikes | With Two Strikes | Difference |
| Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | 226,205 | 66,444 | 29.4% | | | Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | 82,310 | 13,842 | 16.8% | | |
Looking at this data overall, hitters do adjust significantly with two strikes. They swing and miss and take a third strike far less often with two strikes than they do with less than two strikes. And it's the taken strike that is the big difference. Swing-and-misses are actually up from 7% to 12% of total pitches (excluding bunt attempts) when the count gets to two strikes. But taken strikes are way down, from 22% down to less than 5%.
Let's look at some individual players. Here are the top five players who protect the plate, and the bottom five.
Top Five
| Less Than Two Strikes | With Two Strikes | Difference |
| Player | Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | Reggie Willits, LAA | 692 | 271 | 39.2% | | Luis Castillo, Min | 757 | 268 | 35.4% | | Kevin Youkilis, Bos | 891 | 337 | 37.8% | | David Eckstein, StL | 577 | 177 | 30.7% | Johnny Damon, NYY | 746 | 270 | 36.2% | | | Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | 277 | 28 | 10.1% | | 263 | 18 | 6.8% | | 370 | 36 | 9.7% | | 180 | 7 | 3.9% | | 357 | 36 | 10.1% | | | Pct. | | 29.1% | | 28.6% | | 28.1% | | 26.8% | | 26.1% | |
Bottom Five
| Less Than Two Strikes | With Two Strikes | Difference |
| Player | Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | Miguel Olivo, Fla | 588 | 195 | 33.2% | | Vladimir Guerrero, LAA | 782 | 138 | 17.6% | | Geoff Jenkins, Mil | 559 | 138 | 24.7% | | Juan Uribe, ChW | 592 | 153 | 25.8% | Miguel Cabrera, Fla | 836 | 192 | 23.0% | | | Total Pitches | Missed Strikes
Plus Taken Strikes | Pct. | | 198 | 60 | 30.3% | | 188 | 28 | 14.9% | | 221 | 52 | 23.5% | | 195 | 49 | 25.1% | | 254 | 62 | 24.4% | | | Pct. | | 2.9% | | 2.8% | | 1.2% | | 0.7% | | -1.4% | |
The top five are not surprising. It's a group you would expect. It's the bottom five that jump out. Miguel Cabrera -- it would appear that he does absolutely nothing different with two strikes than he does with less than two strikes. It seems to be working for him, the great hitter that he is. Juan Uribe, who finally got his average up over .220 with three hits in his last game, needs to take a different approach with two strikes, it would appear.
However, what we need to look at next is two-strike performance (i.e. batting average, OPS, etc.) relative to this new measure of protecting the plate to get a better idea of how well players are doing. We'll do that in a future installment.