There are very few players in baseball that polarize the supporters of traditional and sabermetric statistics than the Cincinatti Reds’ Adam Dunn. Those who favor traditional stats look at his career .247 batting average and the tons of strikeouts he accumulates. The sabermetric crowd loves his on-base and slugging percentages and are more willing to overlook his deficiencies. If you’ve read UmpBump regularly, then you probably know that I’m pretty firmly on the sabermetric side. And no, I was not a math geek growing up. Hated it, in fact.

Anyhow, it should come as no surprise when I say that Adam Dunn just might be the most underrated hitter in baseball today and I would love to have the guy play for my New York Mets this year. But if Joel Sherman of the New York Post is correct (and when is the Post ever wrong?), that’s simply a pipe dream. Not because the Mets don’t have the pieces to get the deal done - which is probably true - but, even more disconcertingly, because they’re evaluating him using these traditional stats that do not do players like Dunn much justice:

The Mets did consider Cincinnati’s Adam Dunn, but his poor defense, historical problems in clutch situations and high strikeout rates have eliminated interest.

His defense does leave something to be desired. Regardless of whether he’s evaluated using traditional (2007 fielding percentage of .976 in left field) or sabermetric (.826 Revised Zone Rating and 31 out-of-zone plays made in 2007) numbers, Adam Dunn is a below-average left fielder. However, according to the Sherman article as well as MLBTradeRumors.com, the Mets are strongly considering Raul Ibanez of the Mariners instead. While I like the idea of bringing Ibanez into the fold, I do wonder why the question of defense doesn’t come up in this instance. His fielding percentage was pretty much identical to Dunn’s (.975) last season and his zone rating (percentage of balls that were hit into a typical left fielder’s fielding zone and was fielded cleanly) was worse at .813. Ibanez did field more out-of-zone balls (41), but put it all together and you have two fielders with similar levels of ability. If defense is an issue with Dunn, why not so for Ibanez?

Next up on the list of undue criticisms is the idea that Adam Dunn has “historical problems in clutch situations”. This is a tricky area because the word “clutch” means different things to different people and often varies in meaning depending upon the argument one’s trying to make. Statements like “he’s not clutch because he doesn’t hit with runners in scoring position”, “he’s not clutch because he doesn’t hit in the later innings in close games”, or “he’s not clutch because he didn’t hit in April/May/June/July/August/September/October when his team needed him the most” get bandied about at one’s convenience.

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Today the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Oakland DH Jack Cust has made history. With six games to go this year, Cust has played in 118 games and struck out 154 times, most in the American League. Though Cust didn’t join the A’s until May 4, he has the sixth-highest strikeout total in Oakland history.

The major-league mark for most strikeouts with fewer than 125 games played is 158, held by Bo Jackson (1987) and Melvin Nieves (1996).

Cust has a pretty relaxed attitude about his new record.

From the SF Chronicle:

“I’m just going to strike out a lot,” he said. “I always lead every league I’m in in strikeouts, so I figure if it’s the major leagues, at least that’s the best league. It’s better than leading the Pacific Coast League.”

Hard to argue with that.

The Chronicle points out that next year, Cust will be a favorite to break the single-season strikeout record:

Next year, Cust might have a shot at the single season record of 195, set by Cincinnati’s Adam Dunn in 2004.

Umm…earth to the Chronicle. Dunn’s record is yesterday’s news.

I can’t keep track. Do we still care if a player strikes out a lot? It seems to me that we used to blast guys like Dunn for striking out as much as he does. But I don’t hear those same complaints as much anymore. And I certainly don’t hear anybody complaining about Ryan Howard, the new strikeout king.

Have we changed our tune? Is it now okay to strikeout a lot, as long as you put up gaudy power numbers?

Last night Jason Schmidt struck out 16 Marlins in a complete game 2-1 victory and was mobbed at the mound before being doused with champaign in the clubhouse.

Now, this may seem a bit odd considering that 16 strikeouts is not exactly a major league record, but Schmidt was the first Giant to do it since Christy Matthewson in 1904.  More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that in recent years almost no pitcher is left in a game long enough to even approach 16 Ks.

The fact is, strikeouts require a lot of pitches - usually at least 4 or 5 per batter. And in this day and age where the cult of the 100-pitch-limit reigns supreme, pitchers who rack up a lot of punchouts tend to get pulled by the 6th inning because they also rack up huge pitch counts.

It used to be, even just a few years ago, that veteran pitchers would be allowed to stay in games past 100 pitches, and even younger pitchers would be allowed to stay in until 120 or so if they were pitching a shutout or something.  But this year we have being seeing even long-time veterans get pulled in the 6th inning when their pitch count gets over the century mark, even when they are pitching a shutout or have a huge lead.

Last night, Jason Schmidt threw 124 pitches.  This is a paltry amount when you consider that as recently as a few years back Randy Johnson threw 161 pitches in a game, and Nolan Ryan used to somewhat regularly cross the 200-pitch mark a decade ago.

And yet, I would bet that there is no other manager in the game today other than Felipe Alou who would have left Schmidt in the game in the 9th inning after he had already thrown well over 100 pitches and then gave up consecutive leadoff singles and wild pitched the runners to 2nd and 3rd with no outs in a 2-1 ballgame.

But Felipe left Schmidt in the game, and he proceed to strike out the heart of the Marlins lineup in order.

16 strikouts in the game. Enjoy that number guys, because it may be a long, long time before anyone ever approaches it again.