In Part 1 I tried to prove that putting the ball in play beats swinging for power. I lost. Getting on base still wins in the big leagues, but power ties it, and the pressure I believed in did not show up in the numbers.

One thing kept bugging me. In that same data, strikeouts had almost no link to runs scored. Turn on any big league game and you see why that matters. Big swings. Lots of strikeouts. Lots of pop ups. It looks wrong to anyone raised on “just put it in play.”

It is not wrong. It is just built for a different game than the one our kids play.

From Moneyball to the MVP Machine

Moneyball was about finding skills the market undervalued, like getting on base. Find them cheap, win with them.

The next wave flipped that. In The MVP Machine, Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik describe teams and players who stopped hunting for hidden skills and started building them. High-speed cameras. Bat sensors. Pitch tracking. Measure everything, then train the parts that produce damage.

Moneyball vs. the MVP Machine
MoneyballFind skills nobody is paying for. Get on base.
MVP MachineBuild skills on purpose. Bat speed, launch angle, spin.
Little LeagueA different game. More on that below.

Why the pros accept the strikeout

Analysts put a run value on every outcome. These are rough, but the shape is what matters.

About how many runs each outcome is worth (MLB)
Home run
+1.4
Double
+0.8
Single
+0.5
Out in play
-0.25
Strikeout
-0.27
Approximate linear weights. Gray bars are costs, shown by size.

Look at the bottom two. In the big leagues, a strikeout costs only a hair more than a weak ground ball. Both are outs. Major league fielders turn most balls in play into outs, and modern positioning puts them right where weak contact tends to go.

Meanwhile the pitching keeps getting nastier. More velocity. More movement. A soft contact swing does not buy much against that.

So the math says swing to do damage. Accept the strikeouts. A homer is worth almost three singles. For a grown man facing the best pitchers on earth, in front of the best fielders on earth, that trade can make sense.

Little League is not the big leagues

Every number in that chart assumes major league defense. Our kids do not play against major league defense. They play against nine-year-olds.

From what I see from the dugout, a ball in play at this age is not close to an automatic out. Grounders get booted. Throws sail. Somebody forgets the cutoff. Nobody has published the 10U version of that chart, and I will not pretend to know the exact numbers. But I would bet the gap between a strikeout and a ball in play is much bigger for us than it is for them.

And winning is not even our main job.

A strikeout is a play where nobody touches the ball. A ball in play gives nine kids something to do. For us, contact is not only a strategy. It is the activity.

Getting playing time and being involved show up again and again when young athletes describe what makes sport fun (Visek). Contact puts more of the team in the game.

Not either-or

This is not a case against swinging hard. Bat speed is a real skill, and young hitters should feel what a full, aggressive swing is like. Intent matters.

The point is the target. The pros aim their swings at a run value chart built for elite defense. We aim ours at the game in front of us. At 10U the best target is usually simple and close: barrel on the ball, hard, somewhere the defense has to make a play.

What we are taking from both parts

The Pressure Series

Guidelines & sources this field note follows

Note on certainty: the run values are MLB estimates and do not transfer to youth ball. The claim that balls in play are worth more at 10U is a coach's observation and a hypothesis, not a finding.