Keeler v Sewell

For awhile I had been wondering who was the better "strikeout avoider" - Willie Keeler or Joe Sewell.

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.