Kevin Burkhardt suggests MLB impose harsher strikeout penalties on hitters

Major League Baseball has a strikeout crisis and Kevin Burkhardt believes they should consider drastic measures to fix it.

Appearing on the latest episode of Bloomberg’s The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, Burkhardt was asked to play MLB commissioner and offer ways of improving the sport. After imploring the league to do a better job of marketing its starts by giving fans more access to players, Burkhardt went back to his sports radio roots and dropped a radical suggestion for a conservative sport.

“I get why we’ve gotten to where we’ve gotten with the lack of action with the three true outcomes which is homer, walk, strikeout, I understand it’s because what the numbers have said and we’re following the math, which I get,” Burkhardt said. “But I would find some way to penalize a strikeout more than just it’s an out.”

“The strikeout has become all too commonplace. You’ve told me this, you were embarrassed to strike out,” Burkhardt continued to Rodriguez. “You talk to all the greats, they were embarrassed to strike out. It doesn’t matter anymore, and I think we’ve got to find a way to make that a penalty to increase contact.”

Burkhardt admitted he hasn’t thought about what that penalty should be, but the Fox broadcaster believes the sport should find a way to deter hitters from being so willing to strike out.

In 2002, Milwaukee Brewers infielder José Hernández seemed destined to break Bobby Bonds’s then-record of 189 strikeouts in a season. Hernández played in just three of Milwaukee’s final 11 games that season and remained on the bench for their finale to avoid breaking the record. Milwaukee’s manager Jerry Royster defended benching Hernández by blaming the media for putting too much of emphasis on the strikeout record.

In the last 22 years, baseball has gone from protecting players from striking out to not caring at all about the strikeout. Since Hernández was saved from setting the record, 43 players have gone on to match or surpass Bonds’ 189 strikeouts in a season.

Burkhardt’s thought process is interesting. Whether or not it’s realistic depends on the penalty. Maybe the media can just go back to putting strikeout records under enough of a microscope that it makes hitters feel desperate to avoid breaking them. It apparently worked in 2002.

[Bloomberg]