The Byproduct of Aggressiveness

Over the weekend, the Mariners played four games against the Royals. The Royals pitching staff has the highest walk rate of any team in the American League. They also have the fifth lowest strikeout rate in the league, so overall, they’re just not very good. The Mariners, in four games against that pitching staff, drew six walks and struck out 51 times. They struck out at least 11 times in each game of the series, becoming just the eighth team in AL history to accomplish that in four consecutive games. No AL team has ever done it in five straight games, so the M’s will go for that record tonight. Jeff wrote about this yesterday over at Lookout Landing, and Mike touched on it here last week, but the M’s have now become the biggest collection of hacks in baseball. The only teams with worse BB/K ratios are in the NL, where they have to use pitchers several times a game, and even their marks aren’t that much worse than what the M’s are putting up. ...