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Tim NewcombI have wondered about this too, and often felt that strikeouts were a wildly overrated stat (as Nolan Ryan, I believe, was a wildly overrated pitcher).
But Bill James and other baseball analysts have demonstrated pretty convincingly that a young pitcher's K/IP rate is THE best single predicter of his ability to pitch effectively in the major leagues over a period of time. Which, by the way, puts the career of Mark Fidrych in a different light-- all the statistical predicters suggest that the Bird would not have had a long career in any case since even in his first year, he wasn't striking anybody out (97 in 250 innings). He still had a great season, though.
I remember James claiming that there wasn't a single pitcher in MLB history whose strikeout rate was below a certain level in his third season who went on to have a long effective career. Sorry I can't remember more specifics-- it's probably in the Historical Abstract. So I concluded that there's got to be something in the evaluative power of the strikeout. I still don't think it should count for as much as the Win total, winning PCT, and ERA.