What I've taken a look at is -- as the title says -- line drive percentage and batting average on balls in play. Line drive percentage is just that, the percentage of balls hit in play that are line drives. Batting average on balls in play is similar, only it factors out things such as strikeouts and homeruns, and focuses on the "luck" involved with getting a basehit. Line drive percentage can also be used to estimate what a players BABIP should be by adding .12 to the percentage. The average for each is around .300, ±5 percentage points. While faster players will likely gain a few extra basehits on groundballs over the course of a season and stronger players will gain a couple homers on flyballs, for the most part, these two stats are very good indicators of how a player's season is truly going. They also give a much deeper grasp for how a player's batting average factors into their actual production.
So, without any further delay, let's go to the research.
| Player | BA | BABIP | LD% | eBABIP |
| McCann | .298 | .303 | .164 | .284 |
| Teixeira | .272 | .287 | .192 | .312 |
| Johnson | .276 | .317 | .176 | .296 |
| Escobar | .289 | .317 | .153 | .273 |
| C. Jones | .385 | .395 | .229 | .349 |
| Diaz | .250 | .313 | .158 | .278 |
| B. Jones | .278 | .378 | .132 | .252 |
| Kotsay | .277 | .290 | .204 | .324 |
| Blanco | .271 | .339 | .203 | .323 |
| Francoeur | .234 | .263 | .168 | .288 |
| Infante | .275 | .305 | .194 | .314 |
| Norton | .217 | .263 | .220 | .340 |
| Gotay | .211 | .277 | .196 | .316 |
| Lillibridge | .154 | .235 | .118 | .238 |
| Anderson | .318 | .333 | .095 | .215 |
| Miller | .100 | .103 | .200 | .320 |
| Prado | .250 | .262 | .071 | .191 |
| eBABIP = estimated BABIP = LD% + .120 | ||||
And from that set of data, we can go in a number of different directions, I'll just choose a couple of them: first I'll look at the difference in line drive percentage and actual BABIP, and then I'll look at some adjusted stats based on eBABIP.
First up, the relationship between line drive percentage and BABIP. The bigger the difference between the two, the more likely that a player is finding holes with his liners; the lower, chances are the player us just hitting the ball right into the teeth of the defense. Sooner or later, these numbers are going to start gravitating towards a player's career average. Because of that, I've also included each player's career line drive percentage into the following table.
| Player | BABIP | LD% | Career LD% | Diff. |
| B. Jones | .378 | .132 | --- | .246 |
| Anderson | .333 | .095 | --- | .238 |
| Prado | .262 | .071 | .121 | .191 |
| C. Jones | .395 | .229 | .220 | .166 |
| Escobar | .317 | .153 | .177 | .164 |
| Diaz | .313 | .158 | .190 | .155 |
| Johnson | .317 | .176 | .166 | .141 |
| McCann | .303 | .164 | .181 | .139 |
| Blanco | .339 | .203 | --- | .136 |
| Lillibridge | .235 | .118 | --- | .117 |
| Infante | .305 | .194 | .191 | .111 |
| Francoeur | .263 | .168 | .174 | .095 |
| Teixeira | .287 | .192 | .208 | .095 |
| Kotsay | .290 | .204 | .223 | .086 |
| Gotay | .277 | .196 | .183 | .081 |
| Norton | .263 | .220 | .225 | .043 |
| Miller | .103 | .200 | .220 | -.097 |
What do we get from this table? Well, obviously the two names at the top of the list aren't going to be able to keep their BABIP that high. And players like Prado, Escobar and McCann who are all well below their career LD% should all expect to see their numbers take a jump up over the rest of the season. On the flipside, Chipper and Kage should see a few of those liners start to find leather over the next couple months.
The final thing I did with this data set was run some adjusted numbers on hits, BA, OBP, SLG and OPS. Of course, the only number that was really calculated from the above data was a new number of hits. Using each player's current BABIP (by the way, for those who don't know it, the formula can be found here), I recalculated the formula using the eBABIP in it's place and a variable for the number of hits. This gave me an adjusted number of hits based on the player's actual batting average on balls in play and their estimated BABIP based on the line drive percentage predictor. Then, using this new number of hits, I recalculated batting average and using isoOBP (BA minus OBP) and isoSLG (BA minus SLG) I also calculated new values for OBP and SLG.
And here are those:
| Player | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | OPS+ |
| C. Jones | .348 | .440 | .586 | 1.026 | 143 |
| Teixeira | .291 | .399 | .503 | .902 | 126 |
| McCann | .281 | .351 | .525 | .876 | 122 |
| Infante | .294 | .358 | .432 | .790 | 110 |
| Norton | .277 | .372 | .415 | .787 | 110 |
| Kotsay | .304 | .350 | .435 | .785 | 110 |
| Johnson | .259 | .335 | .430 | .765 | 107 |
| Francoeur | .254 | .307 | .394 | .701 | 98 |
| Gotay | .239 | .337 | .352 | .689 | 96 |
| Escobar | .251 | .324 | .351 | .675 | 94 |
| Blanco | .253 | .354 | .318 | .672 | 94 |
| Miller | .250 | .332 | .325 | .657 | 92 |
| Prado | .182 | .278 | .341 | .619 | 86 |
| Anderson | .227 | .284 | .318 | .602 | 84 |
| B. Jones | .185 | .223 | .370 | .593 | 83 |
| Diaz | .227 | .247 | .288 | .535 | 75 |
| Lillibridge | .154 | .154 | .231 | .385 | 54 |
There you have it.
I found all this to be quite interesting, hopefully you feel the same.
I found all this to be quite interesting, hopefully you feel the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment