July 4, 2009
Rich Barbieri
John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell David Gassko Jonathan Hale Brandon Isleib
Chris Jaffe
Bruce Markusen Harry Pavlidis Jeff Sackmann Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Dan Turkenkopf Colin Wyers Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
StubHub is where fans buy and sell Yankees Tickets, Red Sox Tickets, White Sox Tickets, Mets Tickets and all other baseball tickets. If you are looking for World Series Tickets, ALCS Tickets or NLCS Tickets, you can find them at StubHub! More hot selling tickets include: Cubs Tickets, Astros Tickets, Dodgers Tickets, Angels Tickets and Detroit Tigers Tickets. Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets.  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
If Line Drives Could Speakby Dave StudemanMarch 14, 2005 In the Stats 1991 Baseball Scoreboard (an overlooked successor to the Bill James Abstracts), there was an article entitled If Lineouts Were Hits... The STATS guys (led by John Dewan and Don Zminda) analyzed batting stats to see if batters who hit into a lot of line drive outs one year had better luck the next year. The answer was yes -- batters who hit into the most line drive outs in 1989 increased their batting averages 18 points in 1990, while those who hit into the least decreased their batting averages 11 points. Last year, we looked at The Hardball Times's line drive data, and found, unsurprisingly, that hitting more line drives usually results in hitting for a higher batting average. And a couple of articles later, we found that line drives are particularly well-correlated with BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls in Play. As a general formula, BABIP equals the percent of batted balls that are line drives (LD%) plus .120. So, when drafting batters for your baseball sim or fantasy team, you really should look at which batters had a BABIP that suffered in comparison to LD%, and vice versa. As the STATS analysts showed fifteen years ago, it matters. And here they are -- the "luckiest" batters last year based on the difference between BABIP and LD% (minimum of 300 plate appearances): Player PA LD% BABIP DIF Suzuki I. 762 .183 .401 0.218 DaVanon J. 337 .127 .321 0.194 Sanchez A. 352 .184 .375 0.191 Clayton R. 652 .157 .345 0.187 Newhan D. 412 .188 .369 0.181 Baldelli R. 565 .133 .312 0.179 Bay J. 472 .174 .352 0.177 Ramirez M. 663 .153 .329 0.176 Erstad D. 543 .162 .336 0.173 Bellhorn M. 620 .198 .368 0.170 Hafner T. 576 .186 .356 0.170 Now, Ichiro and Sanchez are the type of speedy players who will naturally lead a list like this. And maybe Darin Erstad and Rocco Baldelli have the same sort of skill. Manny Ramirez and Royce Clayton are probably helped by their home park (though Clayton won't be hitting in Coors this year). Putting all of that aside, however, my guess is that eight of these ten players will see their batting average decline in 2005. I promise to review that prediction at the end of the year. So who was particularly unlucky with their line drives last year? Here's the same list, in reverse: Player PA LD% BABIP DIF Palmeiro R. 651 .211 .255 0.045 Hidalgo R. 359 .180 .233 0.053 Walker T. 424 .231 .285 0.054 Sanchez R. 307 .212 .267 0.055 Spiezio S. 415 .176 .232 0.057 Sierra R. 338 .190 .247 0.057 Phillips J. 412 .172 .230 0.058 Wilson D. 359 .240 .300 0.060 Munson E. 357 .169 .231 0.062 Gomez C. 377 .248 .313 0.066 Lots of slow players on this list. One of the intriguing players is Palmeiro, whose home run output in 2004 would lead you to believe that he's in a rapid decline. But his line drive percentage says otherwise, and it will be interesting to see how he does this year. It seems certain that Hidalgo and Walker will have better averages in 2005 -- particularly Hidalgo in that Arlington ballpark. And the majority of these batters will probably have higher batting averages next year. Think we can apply the same logic to pitchers? Let's try. Here's a list of pitchers who had the highest difference between BABIP and LD% last year. In other words, these pitchers were unlucky with the line drives, and are likely to improve this year (minimum of 100 IP): Player IP BABIP LD% DIF Shields S. 105.3 .307 .140 .167 Halladay R. 133.0 .308 .142 .165 Sele A. 132.0 .313 .157 .155 Lowe D. 182.7 .327 .172 .155 Ponson S. 215.7 .327 .173 .154 Davis J. 114.3 .338 .185 .153 Lackey J. 198.3 .311 .161 .150 Reyes D. 108.0 .313 .163 .150 Lieber J. 176.7 .323 .178 .145 Dickey R. 104.3 .322 .180 .142 This would indicate bounceback years are in store for a couple of high-profile offseason pitchers, Derek Lowe and Jon Lieber. Let's move onto the second verse, same as the first, only reversed: Player IP BABIP LD% DIF Vargas C. 118.3 .273 .219 .055 Rusch G. 129.7 .287 .227 .059 Greinke Z. 145.0 .267 .206 .060 Elarton S. 117.3 .236 .173 .063 Villone R. 117.0 .258 .193 .065 Leiter A. 173.7 .240 .174 .066 Ishii K. 172.0 .254 .188 .067 Glavine T. 212.3 .261 .191 .070 Tomko B. 194.0 .279 .209 .070 Lilly T. 197.3 .261 .187 .074 These are the pitchers most likely to see their performance go south in 2005, at least according to this data. Perhaps the biggest surprise on the list is the Royals' Zack Greinke. I would make another bold prediction at this point, except for one caveat. We really don't know how persistent the ability is among major league pitchers to manage the number of line drives allowed. In fact, the evidence I've seen would indicate that, once a major league pitcher reaches the major leagues, his line drive-stopping capability is pretty much the same as every other pitcher's. In other words, the line drive is usually a result of the batter's skill, and not a lack of the pitcher's. To get a better handle on which pitchers are likely to improve or decline next year, let's turn to a favorite stat of mine, FIP, or Fielding-Independent Pitching. FIP is a measure of the "Three True Outcomes" that a pitcher can control (strikeouts, walks and home runs), translated into ERA. Here are the pitchers whose 2004 ERA was much higher than their 2004 FIP, and hence are likely to improve this year (minimum of 100 innings pitched): Player IP ERA FIP Diff Fassero J. 111.0 5.51 4.35 1.16 Millwood K. 141.0 4.85 3.82 1.03 Obermueller W. 118.0 5.80 4.86 0.93 Acevedo J. 157.7 5.94 5.01 0.93 Vogelsong R. 133.0 6.50 5.57 0.93 Lowe D. 182.7 5.42 4.50 0.92 Van Poppel T 115.3 6.09 5.21 0.88 Fossum C. 142.0 6.65 5.80 0.86 Sparks S. 120.7 6.04 5.30 0.74 Benoit J. 103.0 5.68 4.97 0.70 Johnson J. 196.7 5.13 4.46 0.67 Wood M. 100.0 5.94 5.31 0.63 Santos V. 154.0 4.97 4.34 0.63 Ponson S. 215.7 5.30 4.68 0.62 Benson K. 132.3 4.22 3.63 0.58 Davis J. 114.3 5.51 4.95 0.56 Prior M. 118.7 4.02 3.55 0.47 Burnett A. 120.0 3.68 3.21 0.47 Alvarez W. 120.7 4.03 3.56 0.46 Lidle C. 149.0 5.32 4.90 0.42 Hermanson D. 131.0 4.53 4.12 0.41 Mussina M. 164.7 4.59 4.18 0.41 Jennings J. 201.0 5.51 5.10 0.41 Redding T. 100.7 5.72 5.32 0.40 Derek Lowe is on both this list and the list of "unlucky line drive" pitchers, as is the Indians' Jason Davis. Lowe will certainly improve this year, particularly in Dodger Stadium. I'm less sure of Davis's rebound, primarily because his lower FIP was primarily the result of a low home run total, and there's no assurance he will continue to avoid the gopher ball in 2005. However, between his FIP and LD%, there seems to be a good chance he will get his ERA into the 4's again. Here's a list of the players you can expect to do worse next year, based on the difference between ERA and FIP (minimum of 100 innings: Player IP ERA FIP Diff Leiter A. 173.7 3.21 4.78 -1.57 Elarton S. 117.3 4.53 5.87 -1.34 Zambrano V. 128.0 4.43 5.53 -1.10 Lima J. 170.3 4.07 5.11 -1.04 Villone R. 117.0 4.08 5.10 -1.02 Vargas C. 118.3 5.25 6.22 -0.97 Greinke Z. 145.0 3.97 4.94 -0.97 Perez O. 196.3 3.25 4.20 -0.95 Westbrook J. 215.7 3.38 4.27 -0.89 Peavy J. 166.3 2.27 3.16 -0.88 Lopez R. 170.7 3.59 4.45 -0.87 Marquis J. 201.3 3.71 4.57 -0.86 Zambrano C. 209.7 2.75 3.59 -0.84 Webb B. 208.0 3.59 4.43 -0.84 Trachsel S. 202.7 4.00 4.82 -0.82 Day Z. 116.7 3.93 4.73 -0.80 Moyer J. 202.0 5.21 5.98 -0.77 Kennedy J. 162.3 3.66 4.37 -0.71 Bell R. 123.0 4.46 5.17 -0.71 Ortiz R. 204.7 4.13 4.82 -0.68 Lilly T. 197.3 4.06 4.74 -0.68 Glavine T. 212.3 3.60 4.25 -0.65 Milton E. 201.0 4.75 5.38 -0.63 Suppan J. 188.0 4.16 4.79 -0.63 Redman M. 191.0 4.71 5.29 -0.57 Ishii K. 172.0 4.71 5.28 -0.57 Pavano C. 222.3 3.00 3.56 -0.57 Franklin R. 200.3 4.90 5.45 -0.56 Santana J. 228.0 2.61 3.16 -0.55 Buehrle M. 245.3 3.89 4.41 -0.52Every pitcher on the "lucky line drive" list made this list, except for Rusch and Tomko. I think you're very likely to see declining performances for most of the pitchers on both lists, as well as those at the top of this list. As for Zack Greinke, I hope this isn't a true indication of his fate in 2005. Royal fans could use a break. Dave is the manager of the Baseball Graphs website.. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: Around the Majors: Retirement>> <<Previous Article: Around the Majors: Roster moves |
