I'm guessing you may not be enjoying it too much so far. . . .

 At some point, don't you HAVE to unnecessarily expose your fans to miserable conditions?  My vote would be "No", you don't have to do that. 

 Well, haven't really thought about it.   Off the top of my head, the top two candidates would be Judge and Trout.   It takes a long career, so it requires a good player.   Trout would break the record somewhere around 10,000 at bats, which he will probably get--and we have to assume that strikeout rates will continue to ascend, for Trout as well as others.  

 Well. . .saying "could it be that simple" sounds like there has been a discussion going on about why stolen base percentages are increasing.   If there has been such a discussion, I've missed it.  

 

I would relate it to this.   In my memory, in the 1960s and 1970s, NFL place kickers had really terrible conversion rates, relative to what they have now.   Guys would attempt field goals that they could not make.    

 

What happened to field goal kickers was that they developed, with more information, a vastly better idea of what they could hit and what they couldn't.   In modern football the coaching team assembles before the game and says "with these wind conditions we think he can hit a 42 yard field goal going south or a 49 yard field goal going north."   If it's 43 going south, they're not going to try it. 

 

It's the same here.  Modern base stealers, given the much information that we now have, KNOW what their parameters are.   They know if the release is  x and the pop time is y, they can make it, and they know if the release time is x+1 or the pop time is y+1, they can't.   

 

It's totally different than it was 40 years ago.   40 years ago it was bravado and machismo and reputation.   I can run on that guy.  I know I can beat him.   But they didn't REALLY know, so they attempted a lot of stolen bases when it just wasn't there.  

 I think so.   You'd have a hell of a time preventing it.   

 No idea.   Why don't you send me a list of your medicines, and we'll look it over. 

 Thanks.

 Right, thanks.   And there's a profound lesson there.  We don't understand the experience that we are living at the time we are living it. . .none of us do.  In retrospect, the failure to monitor the height of the mounds, the failure to require hitting backgrounds for the hitters. . .these things were crucial, but we didn't "see" them at the time.  It was only when we (a) lowered the mound and (b) enforced the rule that we understood what that meant.  

 

In the early 1990s there was a hitting explosion, and if you go back to that more recent period (more recent than 1968) and read people's explanations of what was going on, you'll see that we were ALL wrong.   People had started using steroids, but we didn't understand at that time what that meant.  

 

The same happens all the time in politics.  If you watch the talking heads explaining what is happening with Mueller or with the firings in the White House or with Trump's silly tweets or whatever. . . all of their analysis is wrong.   None of them really has any understanding of what is happening, because we lack perspective on it.  We'll understand it better in retrospect. 

 

Or perhaps a better example.  .. .a relationship.  Many times when you are in a relationship, particularly if the emotions in that relationship are intense, you really don't understand what is happening in that relationship at the time that it is happening.  Later on, after the relationship is over or has moved on to a different stage, then you may see more clearly what was going on.  The person you were in a relationship with may have had other interests or other problems or other relationships that you really didn't have any understanding of at the time, but later on, you see how these things were defining the relationship between the two of you.  Same thing here.   We can't reliably interpret what is happening in the game while it is happening.  

 You might be right, but I wouldn't be too sure.  I doubt that pitching motions are slower than they were 30 or 50 years ago.   I'd bet that they are, in fact, much quicker.  

 If other teams were also using higher mounds, that doesn't mean that they were copying the Dodgers.  If other hitters used corked bats, were they copying Graig Nettles?  

 OK.  

 I'll try to do a study of it.  

 

* * * * *

 

Well, let’s see. . .how do I get to that?  I took all starting pitchers who had 200 or more starts, and eliminated those born before 1920 or after 1980, thus giving us (essentially) all post-war starting pitchers who are no longer active.  This left me with 415 starting pitchers.   Then I identified the career-high strikeout-per-inning season for each pitcher, ignoring any seasons with less than 150 innings pitched.    

Then I numbered the pitcher’s 150-inning seasons, 1, 2, 3, etc.. . .his first 150-inning season, his second, his third, etc. 

Of the 415 pitchers, 89 had their highest strikeout per inning season in their first season pitching 150 or more innings, including, as you mention, Sutton and Gooden, but also including Johnny Antonelli, Vida Blue, Orel Hershiser, Tim Hudson, Tommy John, Jamie Moyer, Fernando Valenzuela and Jim Palmer.

67 of the pitchers had their highest strikeout season in their second 150-inning season, 56 in the third, 55 in the fourth, 43 in the fifth, 30 in the 6^th, 29 in the 7^th, 15 in the 8^th, 8 in the 9^th, 13 in the 10^th, two in the 11^th, three in the 12^th, two in the 13^th, and one each in the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th.    The three who hit the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th were Early Wynn (1958), Nolan Ryan (1987) and Steve Carlton (1983).   John Lackey was one of those who hit his high water mark in his 13^th season. 

 I'll take a look at it.  

 

(Later)

 

I took all players who played at least 1,000 career games and were not active in 2017, and eliminated seasons with less than 400 plate appearances.   Then I compared the season to the career numbers by the sum total of the absolute difference between the season and the career batting average, the season and the career on base percentage, and the season and career slugging percentage.   

 

The LARGEST differences ever were by two 19th century players, Hugh Duffy in 1894 (478 points) and Tip O'Neill in 1887 (440 points), followed by (3) Barry Bonds, 2004, 434 points, (4) Barry Bonds, 2002, 401 points, (5) Willie Keeler, 1907, 389 points, (6) Chuck Klein, 1940, 387 points, (7) Ed Delahanty, 1892, 385 points, (8) Barry Bonds, 1986, 380 points, (9) Norm Cash, 1961, 375 points, (10) Adam Dunn, 2011, 363 points, and (11) Barry Bonds, 2001, 357 points.  

 

That is the opposite of what you had asked about, of course, but this is just my habit. . .to put out all of the incidental stuff I found while looking for X first, and then work toward the actual question.   The SMALLEST difference ever is for Johnny Callison, 1969, 2 points, and at this point I remember that I have done this stufy before because I remember finding that before.  The second-smallest difference ever was by Jack Doyle, 1899, 3 points, and the third-smallest ever was by Earl Battey, 1964, also 3 points.   That seemed kind of interesting because Battey and Callison were both on the bench as young players for the 1959 White Sox, and both got traded away that winter--as did Norm Cash; Cash, Callison, Battey and a couple of other good young players all got sent packing by the White Sox that winter.  John Romano. . .I don't remember who all. 

 

Anyway, in 4th place is Steve Sax, 1982, who is in fact a rookie, so his rookie numbers predict his career numbers even better than Reese's--3 points total discrepancy, as opposed to 8.  Sax hit .282 as a rookie with a .335 on base percentage, .359 slugging, whereas in his career he hit .283, .335,.358.   It is three points total if you save more decimals.

 

Three other rookies also came closer than Reese--Gus Bell in 1950 (5 points), Luis Aparicio in 1956 (6 points) and Tommy Harper in 1963 (8 points).   Don't actually know whether Harper is ahead of Reese or behind him if you save more decimals.   

 I think there are very few cases in history in which you can say definitively that a player's in-season pattern has held up throughout his career.  Many times a player will do something three times in four years or something, and people see a pattern and insist there is one.  But in almost all cases, when you get to the end of the player's career, you see that he is the same player in April that he is in June, except that (of course) everyone hits more in June because it is warmer.  

 

An exception might be Warren Spahn, who had a career won-lost record of 160-73 in August and September, whereas he was not much over .500 (166-150) in May, June and July.   That's probably beyond chance.   Randy Johnson had a very impressive late-season record.  99% of the time, it's just something that happens.  

 You go ahead. I have no interest in Andruw Jones.