While White Sox slugger Todd Frazier looks at Wins Above Replacement, runs saved and other modern day stats, he admits some of the computations don't really register.
He's not anti-analytics, but prefers the eye test.
"I don't understand most of it, to be honest," Frazier said. "I understand basically if you're a ballplayer or not. The best compliment you can get in baseball is if a guy comes up to you or tells somebody 'That guy is a ballplayer,' or 'That guy can play.'
"They don't worry about numbers. But at the end of the day, when you look at that baseball card, what do you do? You look at the numbers on the back. Some look pretty. Some don't."
As baseball nears the third decade of the 21st century, some of the numbers on the backs of baseball cards are increasingly ugly.
A record 38,983 strikeouts were recorded in major league baseball in 2016, an average of 21.1 percent of at-bats. Strikeout totals have risen every season since 2005, and don't show any signs of going down.
The players don't seem to mind and fans now are accustomed to the new norm. Home runs also went from 4,186 in 2014 to 5,610 last year, a 34 percent rise, so it's a trade-off many can accept.
The simple explanation for the increase is the rise in velocity among strong, young pitchers.
"It's just part of that's how it is," Angels center fielder Mike Trout said. "Pitchers are throwing harder, and have nasty stuff."
Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant concurs, suggesting the higher strikeout totals are a byproduct of harder throwers, especially toward the end of games.
"It's just where things are going with pitchers, how good they're getting," Bryant said. "It seems like every reliever is coming in throwing upward of 100 mph, and obviously that's tough to hit. But it has been around for a couple of years now.
"For myself, it's all about improving. I did that from Year One to Year Two, and I expect to do that from Year Two to Year Three."
Few complain about the strikeouts of Trout or Bryant, the reigning MVPs of their respective leagues. Frazier hit a career-high 40 home runs in '16 with 163 strikeouts, while his 24.5 percent strikeout rate was 21st highest in the majors. Still, he wound up 28th in RBIs (98) and could have been higher if he had hit better in the clutch. Frazier batted .169 with runners in scoring position, 18th worst among players with 50 or more at-bats.
Frazier said he needed to work on his RISP, but believes the strikeouts are something that "comes with" being a slugger.
"If you try to hit the long ball, sometimes you're going to be late," he said. "Some guys guess at pitches. If they get that pitch, most of the time they don't miss it. It's just one of those things. My strikeouts were up last year, but I'm not really worried about that. I know it's going to come."
After a league-leading 199 strikeouts in 2015, his Rookie of the Year season, Bryant cut his total to 154 last year. He also sliced his strikeout rate from 30.6 percent in '15 — third-worst in the majors — to 22 percent. Keeping that rate around 20 to 22 percent or less "would be great," Bryant said.
"To me it's not necessarily looking at the number of strikeouts because it's all dependent of what kind of team you play on and how many at-bats you get," he said. "I look at the percentage, and that's a good percentage for me."
Frazier said he would like to average less than one strikeout per game.
"You don't want to be over 162," he said. "I was pretty close last year, but it's baseball. Some days are better than others. And home runs win games."
Is it possible to hit home runs and not strike out too much? Reds first baseman Joey Votto had 29 homers with only 120 strikeouts last year, along with a league-leading .434 on-base percentage. But he's more patient than most, and won't chase a pitch he can't hit.
"I guess it's a mindset," Frazier said. "He's a guy who works the counts, and he looks for one pitch and one pitch only. With two strikes it'll change, but if it's not that one pitch in that one spot, he's not going to swing.
"That's tough for me to do. I'm completely opposite. I'm looking for a pitch in an area, and if it's in that area I'm going to swing. That's the difference between (high and low) on-base percentage. Do I want to walk? No, I don't, to be honest with you. I want to drive guys in."
Not everyone can be Votto. For sluggers like Frazier and Bryant, it's all about getting runs in by any means necessary, and strikeouts are just an occupational hazard.
"If you're able to continue to sustain hitting for power and driving in runs, then nobody cares about the strikeouts," Bryant said. "But that's not who I am. I want to do both well at the same time, bringing down that percentage. That's just me being a perfectionist."
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