Sewell's numbers have been fairly well known in stat circles for awhile, 114 strikeouts over 13 seasons, including 9 straight seasons of under 10 k's - 2 with 3 (1930, 1932) and 3 with 4 (1925, 1929, 1933).
Willie Keeler has always had a reputation as a tough player to strike out and his up until recently partial totals gave an indication of that (6 in 1894 & 9 in 1896). Now that all of Keeler's missing seasons have been added to B-R, we can now get a more complete picture of Keeler's ability to avoid the whiff.
First of all, one can go to B-R and look at the AB/K career leaders and see that Keeler & Sewell are neck and neck.
Keeler - 63.17
Sewell - 62.56
Career Leaders - At-bats per K
But this raises the inevitable dispute that Keeler hit in an era that had less strikeouts per ab anyways; Afterall, Sewell played during the era of big hitters.
Well, I wanted to see which player was a better strikeout avoider relative to their eras.
I first went and calculated the K/AB ration for all of the seasons that Keeler and Sewell played in:
| Sewell's ERA | ||||||
| AB | K | k/AB | ||||
| 1920 | AL | 41,982 | 3,615 | 0.086 | ||
| 1921 | AL | 42,796 | 3,579 | 0.084 | ||
| 1922 | AL | 42,296 | 3,570 | 0.084 | ||
| 1923 | AL | 42,016 | 3,613 | 0.086 | ||
| 1924 | AL | 42,225 | 3,235 | 0.077 | ||
| 1925 | AL | 42,573 | 3,292 | 0.077 | ||
| 1926 | AL | 41,753 | 3,418 | 0.082 | ||
| 1927 | AL | 42,117 | 3,398 | 0.081 | ||
| 1928 | AL | 42,144 | 3,689 | 0.088 | ||
| 1929 | AL | 42,180 | 3,517 | 0.083 | ||
| 1930 | AL | 42,878 | 4,086 | 0.095 | ||
| 1931 | AL | 43,673 | 4,032 | 0.092 | ||
| 1932 | AL | 43,419 | 4,021 | 0.093 | ||
| 1933 | AL | 42,663 | 3,916 | 0.092 | ||
| 594,715 | 50,981 | 0.086 | ||||
| Keeler's ERA | ||||||
| AB | K | k/AB | ||||
| 1892 | NL | 63,876 | 5,972 | 0.093 | ||
| 1893 | NL | 56,898 | 3,341 | 0.059 | ||
| 1894 | NL | 57,578 | 3,333 | 0.058 | ||
| 1895 | NL | 56,788 | 3,621 | 0.064 | ||
| 1896 | NL | 55,577 | 3,523 | 0.063 | ||
| 1897 | NL | 56,663 | 3,730 | 0.066 | ||
| 1898 | NL | 62,661 | 4,237 | 0.068 | ||
| 1899 | NL | 62,846 | 3,852 | 0.061 | ||
| 1900 | NL | 39,132 | 2,691 | 0.069 | ||
| 1901 | NL | 38,967 | 4,249 | 0.109 | ||
| 1902 | NL | 38,273 | 3,921 | 0.102 | ||
| 1903 | AL | 37,434 | 4,196 | 0.112 | ||
| 1904 | AL | 41,479 | 5,028 | 0.121 | ||
| 1905 | AL | 40,622 | 5,099 | 0.126 | ||
| 1906 | AL | 40,412 | 4,579 | 0.113 | ||
| 1907 | AL | 40,967 | 4,490 | 0.110 | ||
| 1908 | AL | 40,602 | 4,939 | 0.122 | ||
| 1909 | AL | 39,975 | 4,916 | 0.123 | ||
| 1910 | NL | 40,615 | 4,415 | 0.109 | ||
| 911,365 | 80,132 | 0.088 | ||||
Some observations:
1. Despite playing in completely different eras, the overall league averages for Keeler's and Sewell's K/AB is nearly identical (0.86 vs. 0.88).
2. While the league K/AB in Sewell was relatively stable (narrower variance), 0.77 to 0.96, Keeler's career is distinctly divided into 3 separate periods: 1892, 1893-1900, 1901-1910.
3. 1892 represented the last year of the 50 foot pitching box distance and had a 0.093 K/AB league average
4. With the lengthening of the pitching distance to 60 ft 6 in in 1893, the league average for K/AB went down to 0.059 and averaged 0.063 through the period up through 1900.
5. In 1901, the National League instituted the foul strike rule (1903 for the AL) and as a result, the K/AB jumped up from 0.069 in 1900 to 0.109 in 1901. For the remainder of Keeler's career (1901-1910), his league averaged 0.115 K/AB. This era actually had higher strikeout rates than any season during Sewell's era.
Because of the fluctation in K/AB in Keeler's career, I wanted to compare each to their league average by season and overall career. In order to do that, I adapted the BK+ stat that I had used in my previous research from K/G relative to the league to K/AB relative to the league
Here is Sewell's numbers:
| Sewell | ||||||||
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | G | AB | SO | k/ab | bk+(ab) |
| 1920 | 21 | CLE | AL | 22 | 70 | 4 | 0.057 | 151 |
| 1921 | 22 | CLE | AL | 154 | 572 | 17 | 0.030 | 281 |
| 1922 | 23 | CLE | AL | 153 | 558 | 20 | 0.036 | 235 |
| 1923 | 24 | CLE | AL | 153 | 553 | 12 | 0.022 | 396 |
| 1924 | 25 | CLE | AL | 153 | 594 | 13 | 0.022 | 350 |
| 1925 | 26 | CLE | AL | 155 | 608 | 4 | 0.007 | 1175 |
| 1926 | 27 | CLE | AL | 154 | 578 | 6 | 0.010 | 789 |
| 1927 | 28 | CLE | AL | 153 | 569 | 7 | 0.012 | 656 |
| 1928 | 29 | CLE | AL | 155 | 588 | 9 | 0.015 | 572 |
| 1929 | 30 | CLE | AL | 152 | 578 | 4 | 0.007 | 1205 |
| 1930 | 31 | CLE | AL | 109 | 353 | 3 | 0.008 | 1121 |
| 1931 | 32 | NYY | AL | 130 | 484 | 8 | 0.017 | 559 |
| 1932 | 33 | NYY | AL | 125 | 503 | 3 | 0.006 | 1553 |
| 1933 | 34 | NYY | AL | 135 | 524 | 4 | 0.008 | 1202 |
| 14 Seasons | 1903 | 7132 | 114 | 0.0160 | 536 |
Here are Keeler's numbers:
| Keeler | ||||||||
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | G | AB | SO | k/ab | bk+(ab) |
| 1892 | 20 | NYG | NL | 14 | 53 | 3 | 0.057 | 165 |
| 1893 | 21 | TOT | NL | 27 | 104 | 5 | 0.048 | 122 |
| 1894 | 22 | BLN | NL | 129 | 590 | 6 | 0.010 | 569 |
| 1895 | 23 | BLN | NL | 131 | 565 | 12 | 0.021 | 300 |
| 1896 | 24 | BLN | NL | 126 | 544 | 9 | 0.017 | 383 |
| 1897 | 25 | BLN | NL | 129 | 564 | 5 | 0.009 | 743 |
| 1898 | 26 | BLN | NL | 129 | 561 | 4 | 0.007 | 948 |
| 1899 | 27 | BRO | NL | 141 | 570 | 2 | 0.004 | 1747 |
| 1900 | 28 | BRO | NL | 136 | 563 | 4 | 0.007 | 968 |
| 1901 | 29 | BRO | NL | 136 | 595 | 5 | 0.008 | 1298 |
| 1902 | 30 | BRO | NL | 133 | 559 | 13 | 0.023 | 441 |
| 1903 | 31 | NYY | AL | 132 | 512 | 12 | 0.023 | 478 |
| 1904 | 32 | NYY | AL | 143 | 543 | 12 | 0.022 | 549 |
| 1905 | 33 | NYY | AL | 149 | 560 | 13 | 0.023 | 541 |
| 1906 | 34 | NYY | AL | 152 | 592 | 4 | 0.007 | 1677 |
| 1907 | 35 | NYY | AL | 107 | 423 | 10 | 0.024 | 464 |
| 1908 | 36 | NYY | AL | 91 | 323 | 10 | 0.031 | 393 |
| 1909 | 37 | NYY | AL | 99 | 360 | 6 | 0.017 | 738 |
| 1910 | 38 | NYG | NL | 19 | 10 | 1 | 0.100 | 109 |
| 19 Seasons | 2123 | 8591 | 136 | 0.0158 | 555 |
Again, as stated before, their career K/AB are nearly identical. What is interesting is their BK+ numbers.
1. Career-wise, Keeler holds the edge 555 to 536 (5.5 times better sitrkeout ratio than the league average).
2. Keeler has the 2 best BK+ seasons - 1747 in 1899 and 1677 in 1906.
3. Sewell has more BK+ seasons over 1000 - 5 (1925, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933) versus "only" 3 for Keeler (1899, 1901, 1906). Keeler did have 2 more seasons over 940 (1898, 1900).
4. Keeler did play 6 more seasons than Sewell, but only 200 more games.
5. If we only look at "core" seasons (120+ games) for each, the numbers tell us a slightly different story:
Keeler core, 1894-1906 - BK+ - 819
Sewell core, 1920-1929, 1930-1933 - BK+ - 748
These are arbitrary groupings of course, and either way, these two hitters were easily the best at avoiding the whiff.
