It seems with sabermetics there is a statistic for everything. A poor season for a baseball player can look satisfactory thanks to crunching numbers and then comparing them to others whose skills in a particular area were lacking.
The best baseball statistics are the simple ones. While runs, home runs, and hits are all measured individually, other fun statistics include division and all of those other dreaded math skills.
In an attempt to invent a new baseball statistic, I have decided to stick with two simple ones, home runs and strikeouts. Most home run hitters are also masters of the strikeout, their heavy swings causing them to miss quite often. This can be especially painful for some fans to see their clean-up hitter go from a night of hitting two home runs to the next where they finish with four strikeouts.
This new statistic will be called Strikeouts Under Home Runs, abbreviated SOUHR. The proper pronunciation is sour as in “striking out too much will make fans sour on you.”
The way this statistic will work is dividing a player’s home runs by their strikeouts.
For instance, a player with 50 home runs and 100 strikeouts in a season would have a .500 SOUHR (50 divided by 100).
The importance of this statistic will measure a player’s power total compared to their inability to put the ball in play.
Now that you know why this statistic could be valuable, let us take a look at how some of 2013’s sluggers would have fared with this newly invented formula.
Chris Davis
Home Runs – 53
Strikeouts – 199
SOUHR – .266
Miguel Cabrera
Home Runs – 44
Strikeouts – 94
SOUHR – .468
Pedro Alvarez
Home Runs – 36
Strikeouts – 187
SOUHR – .192
Edwin Encarnacian
Home Runs – 36
Strikeouts – 62
SOUHR – .580
Paul Goldschmidt
Home Runs – 36
Strikeouts – 145
SOUHR – .248
Calculating actual league leaders would take some time, however a quick glance at the league leaders from 2013 has Edwin Encarnacian as a clear favorite having less than twice as many strikeouts as home runs hit.
For sake of interest, these are the SOUHR scores for some of the biggest home run season in history:
Babe Ruth 1927
Home Runs – 60
Strikeouts – 89
SOUHR – .674
Roger Maris 1961
Home Runs – 61
Strikeouts – 67
SOUHR – .910
Mark McGwire 1998
Home Runs – 70
Strikeouts – 155
SOUHR – .451
Barry Bonds 2001
Home Runs – 73
Strikeouts – 93
SOUHR – .784
The highest single-season SOUHR recorded belongs to Tommy Holmes. In 1945 Holmes hit 28 home runs and only struckout 9 times. He would have a SOUHR of 3.111.
Maybe one day when SOUHR catches on Holmes will be in the conversation for most unbreakable records.
Source:
Baseball-Reference
