“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 career. He has come to bat 2,705 times in the majors and struck out just 173 times. His career average of 15.64 plate appearances per strikeout is the best among active American Leaguers.

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?” said Ruben Amaro Jr., the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. “Because they’re taught to throw the ball over the plate. And now, whether it’s P.E.D.‘s or whatever the case may be, they may not be as concerned about using the middle of the plate as they have in the past because they know they’re not going to bang it off the wall every time.

“So walks are great, but if a guy’s throwing it down the middle, who wants to walk? Hit that.”

For the modern hitter, that is easier said than done.