By Blaidd Drwg
Back in July, I made this post about Three True Outcomes. Well, now that the season is over, we can crown this year’s champion. The winner – Mark Reynolds of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Not only did Reynolds win the award, he blew away the second place finisher, Adam Dunn, and Reynolds also won in spectacular fashion by striking out 211 times, having the second lowest batting average for guys who qualified for the batting title, going 5 for 64 in September for an .078 BA (and still managing to post a .231 OBP) and essentially getting benched for the last 8 games of the year.
Here is the 2010 leaderboard:

| TM | PA | HR | BB | SO | OPS+ | TTO% | |
| Mark Reynolds | ARI | 582 | 32 | 83 | 211 | 98 | .56014 |
| Adam Dunn | WAS | 635 | 38 | 77 | 199 | 138 | .49449 |
| Carlos Pena | TB | 571 | 28 | 87 | 158 | 102 | .47811 |
| Colby Rasmus | STL | 527 | 23 | 63 | 148 | 132 | .44402 |
| David Ortiz | BOS | 600 | 32 | 82 | 145 | 137 | .43167 |
| Drew Stubbs | CIN | 569 | 22 | 55 | 168 | 108 | .43058 |
| Justin Upton | ARI | 559 | 17 | 64 | 152 | 111 | .41682 |
| BJ Upton | TB | 603 | 18 | 67 | 164 | 105 | .41293 |
| Prince Fielder | MIL | 692 | 32 | 114 | 138 | 137 | .41040 |
With that incredibly ugly season by Reynolds, I believe the all-time leader board now looks like this:
| TM | PA | HR | BB | SO | OPS+ | TTO% | |
| Jack Cust | OAK | 2311 | 102 | 400 | 732 | 122 | .53397 |
| Mark Reynolds | ARI | 2285 | 121 | 260 | 767 | 108 | .50241 |
| Adam Dunn | TB | 6065 | 354 | 990 | 1632 | 133 | .49068 |
Cust is still #1 for his career (he had a .48941 TTO% in 2010, but only had 425 PA, so he didn’t qualify for the first list), but the lead is shrinking and Adam Dunn has now passed Rob Deer for #3 all-time.
Congratulations, I guess, to Mark Reynolds, who will probably be rewarded by the Diamondbacks not renewing his contract and letting him become a free agent.
It’s probably not a coincidence that almost everyone on the list has an OPS+ over 100. I’d guess those guys can only get playing time if they’re *really* better than more conventional players.
Given the way the Diamondbacks are portrayed in the media, I’m kind of surprised that there are only two of them on the list. (You’d think with all those strikeouts they’d dominate the TTO category.)
Striking out a ton as a hitter doesn’t seem to carry the stigma it used to.
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I think it was Rob Neyer who made the argument a few years back that in some ways, strikeouts are better with runners on 1st because they don’t generally lead to double plays. Then again, they suck when you have a runner on 3rd and need a fly ball.
I think that AZ had another 3-4 guys in the 11-20 spots on the list – which is impressive that you can place 5 of you 8 hitters in the top 20. The nice thing for AZ is that with all the strikeouts, they do hit the ball only one regular had an OPS+ worse than Reynolds and they do draw a decent amount of walks to go along with everything else.
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