Welch - with hitters, there are things that can make a high K rate tolerable, like getting a lot of walks, getting a high contact rate when you do start the bat, and power.
Some of the best hitters in the game have close to a 20% K rate.
Since 2009, of the top 20 hitters by OPS (min 1000 PAs), Votto (#2, 18.7%), Trout (#3, 20.5%), CarGo (#9, 21.6%), Thome (#14, 27.9%), Goldschmidt (#15, 22.3%), Stanton (#16, 28.6%), Youkilis (#18, 19.9%), and Choo (#20, 20.4%) all had K% that round to 19% or higher. OK, I did that to pick up Votto
, but that's 8 out of 20 with high K rates. If I wanted to go to the top 30, I'd pick up Napoli, Werth, Hamilton, and Longoria. What those 8 high K / high OPS hitters have in common is, other than CarGo (8.5%) and Stanton (11.2%), they all had walk rates > 12%. Also, Choo (.171) and Youkilis (.212) were the only ones with ISO (SLG - AVG) < .225.
Of course, we'd like every hitter to be Pujols over that period (#8, 11.7 BB%, 10.4 K%), but it is telling that only 4 of the top 20 OPS hitters over that long period who had a K% < 15% (#1, Cabrera, 12.5 BB%, 14.3 K%; #12, Mauer 12.1 BB%, 12.4 K%; #13, Cano, 7.3 BB%, 12.2 K%).
Regarding Espinosa, he is an extreme case in almost all respects of his game. He is a very good fielder, very good base runner, and, until last year, was a very good power hitter. He also had a miniscule walk rate and a significantly high (25%+ K rate) going into last year. That was still good enough to make him a good second baseman, but then last year, the power fell off the cliff, his strike zone judgment deteriorated to the point where he he was taking a ton of 3d strikes and swinging at a high rate on balls out of the strike zone, and he could not get on enough to use his base running skills. No one argues that he had a decent year. The only argument is whether 2013 is what he is or whether that was all compensating for an injured shoulder (which again, may be what he is because he did not get it repaired).
