Hit Batters as Collateral Damage of Rising Strikeouts Rates

My latest in my obsession with batters getting hit by a pitch was just published at FanGraphs. Link here. Pretty graphs, neat tables--I really pulled out the stops! The conclusion can be expressed as a syllogism (a word that, I'll admit, generally isn't associated with baseball);

• Batters are most likely to be hit when the pitcher is ahead on the count. Counts of 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, and 0-1 are by far the most likely ones to result in batters being hit by the next pitch.
• With rising rates of strikeouts, batters are facing more counts of 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, and 0-1.
• Therefore, rising rates of strikeouts are causing more batters to be hit by pitches.

Click over to the article, which, I promise, does not contain the word syllogism, though it does have a clever link illustrating why correlation is not causation.