3,000

Question - what is harder to do - strike out a batter or hit a dink single?

Chuck Finley of all people got me thinking about this. You see in the history of baseball there have been 25 players to reach the 3,000 hit plateau but only 13 pitchers have managed to accumulate 3,000 strikeouts. Wouldn't it stand to reason that 3,000 strikeouts is a harder goal to achieve?

Where does Finley fit into this discussion you ask?

Well with Kevin (my real first name is James) Brown and Mike Mussina reaching 200 wins - many people remembered that Chuck Finley also has 200 wins. Chuck Finley is also 19th All-Time in strikeouts. I have never heard anyone make a case for Finley for the Hall of Fame (and I'm not going to be the first) but looking at his numbers made me wonder, "is it harder to strike out a batter than it is for the batter to get a dink single?" And - "Why do we value the dink single more?"

Through all the years - only 13 pitchers have managed 3,000 strikeouts but 25 batters have managed 3,000 hits. Wade Boggs is 23rd on the all-time hit list and Finley is 19th on the strikeout list. Why is Boggs' dink singles more valuable than Finley's strikeouts? (And if you don't think that Boggs was the master of the cheap single consider that both teammates Jim Rice and Dwight Evans had more total bases than Boggs - in fact the only player with fewer total bases than Boggs who also had 3,000 hits is fellow dink singles hitter Rod Carew.)

Boggs had 2,253 singles in his career and Rod Carew had 2,404 singles. If you equate singles with strikeouts (which I don't think is really stretching things) then 2,253 would have Boggs 44th on the All-Time strikeout list and Carew's 2,404 would have put him in 33rd place (right behind Luis Tiant).

Why was Carew a lock for the Hall of Fame and not Tiant? Why is Boggs considered a lock when he comes up for enshrinement?

But Boggs won 5 batting titles you say. Well Tom Glavine led the NL in victories 5 times and he is considered a borderline HOF candidate right now. But Boggs had 7 seasons with 200 hits you say. Well Bert Blyleven had 8 seasons with 200 strikeouts - that hasn't gotten him a ticket to Cooperstown. (Also please note that Ted Williams never had a 200 hit season - would you argue that Boggs was a better hitter?)

To get to 3,000 - you would have to have to average 200 (hits or strikeouts) for 15 seasons. Why is it that we value the dink singles more than strikeouts?