The season stats at byucougars.com only go back to the 2013 season, but even then it is obvious our hitters are striking out more. In that 12 year timeframe, our lowest K/inning was in 2016 and until 2019, we never struck out more than 0.8/inning. Since 2019, we've never struck out less than 0.88/inning with the shortened 2020 season being the worst at 1.29 K/inning and this season (2024) being so far the second worst at 1.24 K/inning. This season could be attributed to facing better pitching, but that doesn't account for the other recent elevated seasons of striking out.

It does not appear to be correlated to our teams that were getting more extra base hits, the premise being that heavier hitters strike out more. The correlation is negative (higher slugging percentage does not equate to more strikeouts) at -0.333.

Our two highest slugging percentage teams in this span, 2016 and 2017, had just 0.61 (half the Ks of this year's team) and 0.69 K/inning and also happen to be years where we won the WCC regular season title. Trent Pratt has been the batting or head coach this entire time, so it is difficult to say we have a coaching issue.

What I don't know is if this is an overall College BSB trend or if it is unique to BYU, i.e. is the pitching just getting better or has the strike zone been expanded?