Much was made about ‘s rather obscenely high Major League-leading .396 Batting Average on Balls in Play throughout the 2010 season, and rightly so, as he posted a .395-plus BABIP in three of the season’s six months (including a jaw-dropping .530 in April, his debut month, and .432 mark in July). This was the highest single-season total among qualified hitters since had a .399 BABIP in 2004, the year he broke ‘s 84-year-old single-season hit record. In the interim, put up an eye-popping .394 BABIP in 2009, a .393 in 2007 and a .391 in 2006.
I’m interested in BABIP primarily because it’s not thought to be a repeatable skill — except perhaps by some of the faster players in the league — and more subject to the vagaries of randomness and luck than many of the other stats we often cite. However, is one of the fastest players in all of baseball (in fact, third-fastest in MLB, behind and , per Fangraphs’ Speed Score), and I wanted to see what kind of correlation there was to speed and BABIP, and also whether looking at a given player’s three previous seasons of BABIP (including a raw average of the three) have any predictive value going forward. I looked at 2010′s top 10 BABIP leaders in the AL and NL (there are 12 names in the NL, but that’s because four players tied for 10th).
Note in the chart that for Jackson, the 2009 and 2008 numbers are from the Minor Leagues, since he debuted in 2010. Same thing goes for ‘s 2008, ‘s 2009 and 2008 and ‘s 2009 and 2008. Pretty impressive that these three youngsters were all able to crack the top 21 highest BABIPs in baseball in their first year in The Show, albeit each ending up with considerably different end results (Heyward a monster .376 wOBA, Jackson .333 and Castro .325; the latter two were actually the two lowest wOBAs of the 22 players in the above chart).
Unsurprisingly, for nearly every hitter their BABIPs fluctuate pretty wildly from year to year, which would appear to make BABIP projections something of a crapshoot. For the sake of this exercise, let’s arbitrarily define anyone who has averaged a .350-plus wOBA over the last three seasons at the Major League level as being “highly skilled” at BABIP. That leaves us with , , , and . Bet you didn’t know that Shin-Shoo Choo has the highest average BABIP in MLB over the last three seasons. Also interesting that the two free agent position players who inked $100-plus contracts this offseason made these lists. Ichiro’s presence isn’t surprising, nor is the once and future batting king Mauer, although it’s interesting to see a prodigiously powerful player like Votto up there.
That’s not to say big-time power hitters can’t have high BABIPs — of the 22 players listed above, six had SLGs over .500 — but given speedier players’ higher likelihood of legging out infield hits, it’s interesting to see mashers like Votto, , , , and
trong>Carlos Gonzalez up there with , and Jackson et. al. Obviously those six were among the best hitters in baseball in 2010, so it’s not surprising, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to see none of them in the top 20 next season. I’d have expected these six players to also feature among the MLB leaders in LD%, but only one of them — Hamilton (7th, 22%) — finished in the top 20. The only other top 20 finishers in LD% on this list were and (ahem) , who tied for second in MLB with a 24.2% LD%.
Of the players listed in these charts, A-Jax unsurprisingly has the highest projected BABIP for 2011, although the idea of projecting anyone at .383 — not matter how fast they may run — seems pretty bonkers. Heck, the two fastest players in baseball are only projected at .340 and .331, respectively. However, if Jackson is able to maintain a LD% over 20% and a GB% around 50%, he’s probably as good a bet as any for another significantly above-average BABIP.
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Interesting piece, Larry. I'm surprised, as I'm sure others are, to see power guys like Votto on the list.
But the list also begs the question as to why Gardner's stats aren't better if he's supposedly one of the two fastest players in the game. The answer, to me, is he doesn't hit the ball with authority often enough to raise to the level his speed seems to warrant.
As I've said before, Gardner is not a good pure hitter, which is why he needs to learn to drag bunt better. He should already be an expert at that, but he isn't. He's mediocre, at best, as a bunter overall, and he doesn't even attempt to drag bunt as often as he should.
With his speed, he should be able to get 20-30 drag bunts a year, which would increase his BA, OBP, and BABIP dramatically, along with his SB total.
So, my question is this: what the heck are the Yankees' coaches doing in the minors when they get a guy with great speed? It doesn't take a Ted Williams head for hitting to realize that, when you have a guy with great speed, you should teach him how to drag bunt in the minors.
Gardner is a lot like Vince Coleman. Coleman was, at best, a mediocre hitter, even a bad hitter, But he used his speed to the max (aided by astro turf, of course). Coleman slapped the ball into the turf and laid down drag bunts for hits and turned himself into a valuable piece on the Cardinals.
Gardner needs to be more of that type of player. He doesn't have the turf to help his game, but drag bunting on grass is easier than laying down a drag bunt on carpet. The Yankees should pay someone like Coleman to come to spring training and teach Gardner how to drag bunt; that's the only way they're going to get maximum value out of Gardner.
Hey Wayne,
I agree; you'd think that at some point during his Minor League experience someone would've sat him down and practiced bunting with him until the cows came home.
A player with his all-speed/no-power profile would seem to be an ideal candidate to drop the occasional drag bunt, but for whatever reason Gardner has shown time and again that he is a pretty terrible bunter.
I suppose it's possible that some players just don't have this particular skill and perhaps it's not teachable, but that does seem a bit silly. While I'm not a huge fan of the bunt in general; if Gardner were able to develop into a solid bunter it seems like it would only make his game that much more dynamic.
I just wanted to thank you for the vintage Simpson's reference. I haven't seen the show in….geez, a decade or more. But that was a hilarious episode.
You're welcome, Dean. For some reason "Talkin' Softball" popped in my head the other day and I was hoping I'd be able to get a post title out of one the lines in the song.
You haven't exactly missed anything, considering The Simpsons stopped being funny somewhere around Season 8, and has basically been unwatchable since Season 10.
Great post, i could not agree more….how do you create that graph?
Thanks, Anon@3:57pm. The chart is just data in an Excel spreadsheet; nothing too fancy.
[...] year after BABIPing his way to a solid rookie season in 2010, Jackson came back to earth this year as pretty much every baseball analysts predicted he would, [...]