I don’t think you could spend five minutes looking through the content here at Fantasy Labs without getting hit in the face by some data or content reinforcing how important strikeouts and Vegas lines are for pitcher projections. If you look at the worst MLB offenses in terms of strikeouts and runs scored, there is some overlap where teams are futile in both categories (Mariners), but there are also teams that are more extreme. Take the Astros, who have scored the fifth-most runs and struck out the most times this year. When everything doesn’t line up nicely for us and we have to choose a team to pick on, which way should we lean?
Before we go any further, here are the worst 30% of MLB teams in total strikeouts and runs scored so far into 2015:
Runs Scored:
| Rank | Team | Runs |
| 30 | Phillies | 220 |
| 29 | White Sox | 232 |
| 28 | Mariners | 238 |
| 27 | Brewers | 259 |
| 26 | Mets | 260 |
| 25 | Rays | 264 |
Strikeouts:
| Rank | Team | Runs |
| 30 | Astros | 665 |
| 29 | Cubs | 637 |
| 28 | Padres | 613 |
| 27 | Mariners | 575 |
| 26 | Rangers | 574 |
| 25 | Brewers | 564 |
And here are the Fantasy Labs trends:
Overall, the results are remarkably similar. Next, I was interested to see how better pitchers did against each category. When I apply this next filter, there is some separation between the two. The top 25% of pitchers by strikeout percentile added around 0.7 more to Plus/Minus than the top 25% in WHIP against the worst teams at scoring runs.
From here, I got some kind of crazy results that may be do to a smaller sample size of games so far in 2015. This season, the top pitchers by WHIP have added more value than the top strikeout pitchers when facing the teams that strike out the most. Conversely, the top strikeout pitchers have added more value than the top WHIP pitchers when facing teams that score the fewest runs:
I went back to 2014 and ran the same study with much different results. In 2014, the top WHIP pitchers actually LOST 0.69 from Plus/Minus when facing the teams who struck out most. Strikeout pitchers still did well against teams who scored the fewest runs in 2014.
I think what this all means is that the top strikeout pitchers become must-plays against teams who strike out the most and get more of a boost than the top WHIP pitchers against teams who don’t score many runs. Strikeout pitchers are still good plays against low-scoring teams, while low WHIP pitchers don’t necessarily get a boost from facing a top strikeout team. In fact, there are many examples of these pitchers getting blasted by the top strikeout teams:
