I Could Use a Strikeout

I could use a strikeout. As a hitter, I can use a good strikeout. In reality it took quite a few strikeouts just to learn how to identify the good ones. The good ones go according to plan. The good ones provide answers, not questions.

I can use bad strikeouts too, simply by recognizing that they are not good strikeouts. Bad strikeouts evoke questions and usually a good bit of fear. There’s usually an urge to go ask somebody what’s wrong with my swing or my move (there’s never anything wrong with my swing or my move). Sometimes a bad strikeout alerts me to the reality which is a barrel is no longer the expectation or even the aspiration. Let’s just get a quality plate appearance on the books, be present in the actual competition between me and the pitcher. If the result of said plate appearance is a strikeout – so be it.

Even when I’m swinging it well I can use a good strikeout, probably even more so then – simply as a reminder that this game is still hard, the pitchers will adjust, there’s still work to do. Strikeouts also provide context for the more easily-appreciated outcomes as a hitter. What’s a walk-off grand slam without a good strikeout to end the game with the tying run on third?

Thing is, anyone could use a home run, or a hit, or even a barreled out. These are the tools we all want to use, the feedback every hitter wants to interpret. An easy way to separate yourself in any arena is to embrace the work no one else wants to do or – in this case – use the tools no one else wants to use.

When I realize how useful a strikeout can be, when I appreciate it’s value in my development, the fear goes. The outcomes of my at-bats change from either being great or terrible to either being great now or great later. There are no more threats and hitting – actually hitting, the whole experience of it – changes.