[jawilson2]

In baseball you DO differentiate between whether you struck out swinging or looking.

It matters for the pitcher because if you can disguise your pitch well enough that it looks like a ball coming in but is actually a strike, so that the hitter doesn't even try to hit it, that is a great signal.

As a batter, you typically* want to swing at strikes, so you want to know if you are letting hittable pitches go by. From the time baseball players are like 10 years old, you'll hear coaches and parents yelling "be a hitter, don't strike out looking!".

* there are always situations you probably don't want to swing, like if you have 3 balls and no strikes, you usually want to not swing, and assume you'll get another ball and will get walked to get on base. There are a lot of other situations where you do or don't swing, and the strikeout looking vs swinging measures that.