How effective is protecting the plate with two strikes?

A couple of weeks ago we looked at how often hitters protect the plate with two strikes, but we only touched on how effective they are. With Miguel Cabrera on the list of players who don't try to protect, it raised the question that maybe protecting the plate wasn't all that big a deal.

To figure this one out we started by breaking all 2007 regulars into three groups: Top Protectors (players who protect the plate with two strikes), Average Protectors (the middle group), and No Protectors (players who protected the plate with two strikes least often). We then looked at player performance utilizing batting average and OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) with two strikes and compared that to performance with less than two strikes. Let's first look at batting average. The batting averages of our three groups with less than two strikes are:

The batting averages of our three groups with two strikes are:

The differences:

When we use batting average as a measure, players who protect the plate perform better than those who don't. The batting average of the Top Protectors drops off the least, by 53 points, while the No Protectors drop off 76 points.

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Now let's look at OPS.

The on-base plus slugging percentages of our three groups with less than two strikes are:

The on-base plus slugging percentages of our three groups with two strikes are:

The differences:

OPS shows an even more significant drop in performance. Top Protectors only drop 171 points compared to 248 points for the No Protectors. Bottom line: It appears that major league players, taken as a group, can improve their performance by protecting the plate with two strikes.

Here are the top and bottom performers with two strikes (relative to their performance with less than two strikes):

These guys actually hit better with two strikes than less than two strikes!

The performance for these guys drops off considerably when hitting with two strikes:

Note: All statistics from 2007 regular season through the games of Thursday, July 5, 2007 with a minimum 200 plate appearances.