Baseball can be a copycat sport, and everyone seems eager to take a lesson from the stunning Toronto run to the seventh game of the World Series , which goes something like this: Make more contact and wins will follow . Sounds great, in theory.

That might be the wrong lesson, though, or at least not the completely right one. It’s not that making contact is bad, obviously. It’s great if you can do it well. It’s just that if you think that’s all the Blue Jays did, to simply not strike out and then ride a wave of success, then you’re sort of missing what actually happened.

It’s true that Toronto had the lowest strikeout rate . It’s also true that the three teams with the next-lowest strikeout rates – Kansas City, San Diego, and Miami – were no one’s idea of top-flight offenses. In 202

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