“When I was a little kid, I would cry when I would strike out,” [Jeff] Keppinger said after another whiffless day at the Chicago White Sox training camp this month. “I thought everybody was looking at me like I did something horrible or I stunk really bad because I had to walk back to the dugout. I felt everyone was laughing at me in the stands.”

Keppinger, like Albert Pujols and Dustin Pedroia, is one of the select few major leaguers with more extra-base hits and walks than strikeouts in his ...

Plate discipline is harder for hitters to apply against pitchers who consistently pound the strike zone. Increasingly, pitchers are doing that better.

Walk totals decreased in the majors for the third year in a row in 2012, dipping below 15,000 for the first time in a nonstrike season since 1992, when there were only 26 teams. Hitters, it seems, are simply not as feared as they were before testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

“Not that many people are walking - you want to know why?” ...