Bill James Online posts a very interesting article (subscription required) on the relationship between teams winning the strike zone and winning in general. The strike zone winning percentage is defines as (Pitcher K * Batter BB)/((Pitcher K * Batter BB) + (Batter K * Pitcher BB)). This correlates well with team winning percentage.

Bill makes the point that teams that show a large mismatch between strike zone winning percentage and team winning percentage tend to persist in that regard. The two things that spring from that are that good managers tend to get their teams to out perform their strike zone winning percentage, and expansion teams under-perform their strike zone winning percentage. On the latter point, talking about the 1962 Astros:

I am not arguing exactly that the Astros disprove the theory of Three True Outcomes, but I am arguing that they point forcefully to the limitations of the theory. The other outcomes “don’t matter” because the other outcomes tend, over time, to even out. But when they don’t work out evenly, the other outcomes matter a great deal—and for that reason, one cannot accurately evaluate players just based on those three outcomes.

I have to disagree with Bill here. Three true outcomes in my mind applies to pitchers, because pitchers face a variety of batters, so overall they come close to facing the league average hitter. Individual batters vary widely on their ability to get a hit on a ball in play. Joey Votto, for example, has a very high BABIP, and also can smash home runs.

My belief is that the disconnect between the expansion team strike zone winning percentage and their team winning percentage is that they are made up of low BABIP hitters. In the NL in 1962, the Astros and the Mets finished 9-10 in BABIP, and skewed the league average so much only one other team finished below average.

Expansion teams are made up of marginal players. The best kind of batters that will be available will be ones with good strike zone judgement, but poor ability to hit the ball hard. So even though they put the ball in play, they don’t get a lot of hits. I don’t see any conflict between this and the three true outcomes.