Gregor Blanco: A Deeper Look

So far this season, Gregor Blanco has been doing his best Willie Harris impression. Well, kind of. At this point last season, Harris was still flirting with the .400 mark and still had another week left in him before he hit the wall and his season went into the crapper. Blanco's success hasn't been nearly as prolonged, but he did have a stint of nearly 50 plate appearances where he was flirting with the .350 mark before he came back down to earth over the past three weeks.

But what has been the key to Blanco's success so far? Obviously coming into this season, there were a lot of concerns amongst Braves fans as to whether or not he would be able to have any success against ML pitching given his almost complete lack of pop. Has that been the case?

The short answer? Yes.

Let's take a look at how NL hitters -- as well as his Atlanta teammates -- have done in some situations compared to Gregor:

First, we'll take a look at the percentage of plate appearances which end in the ball being hit to the outfield and how often said PAs end in hits.

National League: 37.78% of 29,470 PAs have ended with the ball reaching the OF
Atlanta Braves: 40.33% of 1,840 PAs have ended with ball reaching the OF
Gregor Blanco: 27.78% of 108 PAs have ended with the ball reaching the OF

Obviously there's a huge discrepancy there. And so far, those concerns about Blanco's lack of power have certainly proven true.

However, while he hasn't been able to routinely get the ball out of the infield, with his speed, that hasn't necessarily been a had thing for him. His rate of hitting the ball somewhere on the infield is right with the rest of the league and his teammates, but the big difference is his running ability has allowed him to get on at a .222 clip while the rest of the league sees balls hit on the infield end up as an out 78% of the time. So, he certainly has that going for him.

But is he going to be able to keep these numbers up to remain a productive members of the Braves? Considering his current batting average on balls in play (BABiP) is at a very high .364 mark -- where as the average hitter generally has a BABiP around the .300 mark -- it doesn't seem that way. And this has already started to shine through. Over the past two weeks, Blanco's BABiP has been .143 and he has seen his batting average drop 35 percentage points over that time.

All hope is not lost with Blanco, however. Another surprising aspect of his game has been the fact he seems to have an Adam Dunn-esque knowledge of the strikezone. His 128 isolated OBP has been a very pleasant surprise for Atlanta, regardless of how he is hitting the ball. Even during the last two weeks, when his BA has taken a nose-dice, he has still been getting on base almost 40% of the time. That is a very nice ingredient for any ML bench.

As long as he can continue hitting the ball on the ground and watching the strikezone, Blanco should actually end up being a very key piece to the Braves success in 2008.