Throughout history there have been players who put up fluke seasons in the majors. Undoubtedly, you’ve got a mental image in your head right now of some such season. Perhaps it’s 2000 Darin Erstad, who put up an 8.7 fWAR (next best season, 3.3 fWAR) or 1970 Billy Grabarkewitz and his 6.1 fWAR (next best season, 0.8 fWAR). The challenge has always been to find out which season was just a fluke and which was a player making a leap to a new level.
One tool for this is to check a player’s BABIP. For the majority of players, a normal BABIP is right around .300 or so. In 2000, Erstad had a .375 BABIP and in 1970, Grabarkewitz had a .368 mark. Of course, what’s normal for MLB players as a group is different from an individual player. In his MLB career, Grabarkewitz had a .299 BABIP while Erstad had a .314 mark.
Due to a variety of factors, most notably speed and how a player hits the ball, a normal BABIP could be .270 for one player and .330 for another. According to Baseball-Reference, Ed Kranepool had a lifetime .271 BABIP while David Wright has a .339 career mark. So, if in a given year both of these guys had a .300 BABIP – it would not be “normal.” It would be an outlier in one direction for Kranepool and one in the opposite way for Wright.
In an effort to account for this, various people have come up with what has been called xBABIP – which stands for expected batting average on balls in play. The first unofficial measure of this was to add 120 points to a player’s LD%. So if he had a 20.0 LD%, he would have a .320 BABIP. This was a good first step, as it recognized that a player who hit a lot of line drives should have a higher BABIP. But we have better systems developed since then.
Right now the best ones are not in public domain, as they incorporate, among other things, Inside Edge’s hard hit rate, which is not immediately available for all players. Recently, Jeff Zimmerman released his xBABIP for 2014 batters. And the news for the Mets is mixed. Here are the results for the eight players expected to start in 2015 for the Mets, ranked from best to worst in XBABIP compared to BABIP:
32 – Curtis Granderson
31 – Lucas Duda
30 – Travis d’Arnaud
20 – Wilmer Flores
(12) – Daniel Murphy
(31) – Michael Cuddyer
(35) – Wright
(44) – Juan Lagares
Interestingly, this xBABIP formula shows that given their speed and their batted ball data, both Granderson and Lagares should have finished with a .297 BABIP in 2014. But Granderson’s mark was .265 and Lagares posted a .341 BABIP. In 5,698 lifetime PA in the majors, Granderson has a .300 BABIP. Given his lifetime mark and what this xBABIP calculator shows, we would be justified in expecting Granderson’s actual BABIP to improve in 2015.
It’s not so cut and dried with Lagares, however.
Lagares has a lifetime .326 BABIP but 452 of his lifetime 873 PA in the majors came last year, so it’s hard to say he’s a guy who will post high BABIPs on a regular basis, like Wright. Proponents of Lagares inevitably point out that he had high BABIPs in the minors so we should expect likewise in the majors. But the overwhelming majority of MLBers post high BABIPs in the minors. Kranepool, who had a .271 BABIP in the majors, had a .339 BABIP in the minors.
It’s a bucket of cold water to see Lagares’ xBABIP. Meanwhile, ZiPS projects Lagares to record a .328 BABIP in 2015 while Steamer forecasts a .302 mark in the category. And, the news isn’t better with Granderson. ZiPS has a .274 BABIP projection and Steamer’s is for a .263 mark for the veteran outfielder.
It’s extremely doubtful that either ZiPS or Steamer uses these particular xBABIP calculations in their formulas. And much like with the two projection systems, a poor number in this xBABIP is not the final word on the subject. But there’s little doubt that a player who rarely walks and who does not have much over-the-fence power needs a high BABIP to be successful.
Zimmerman writes, “When creating the xBABIP values, I found it correlated more to the next season’s BABIP then any other easily created formulas.” This is good news for Granderson, Duda and d’Arnaud and it’s less than ideal for Cuddyer, Wright and Lagares. Hopefully a return to health will help mitigate these numbers for Cuddyer and Wright.
And may the BABIP gods continue to smile on Lagares.
Brian, what do you make of this stat applied to Matt Reynolds?
…And yes, I am itching for February!
I’m not optimistic about Granderson, though. I am about pitchers and catchers circa Feb. 20th!
I have no idea what Reynolds’ xBABIP might be. My thing with Reynolds is that when you apply the MLE to his numbers, they’re just not that impressive. Our rule of thumb is to remove 19% of a player’s OBP and 34% of his SLG in the move from Las Vegas to the Mets. His .333/.385/.479 line in LVG translates to a .253/.311/.316 line in the majors. That’s not as good as what Ruben Tejada did last year.
Hi Brian,
As i’m sure you know I am knew around here in my short time here I have come to look forward to your articles. Even when I don’t agree I find them thought provoking. As for Granderson’s BABIP, if your hitting in a bandbox where 20 more fly ball outs in a season in another park become HR’s and then you move as you are starting your natural decline because of age to a pitcher friendly park, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect both of these new circumstances to affect your BABIP negatively?
Keep up the good work sir.
I’m unaware of any study where they compared Granderson’s 2014 to what would have happened if he played in Yankee Stadium instead of Citi. It wouldn’t surprise me if he lost 2 or 3 HR. I would be absolutely shocked if he lost 20 HR.
Well his last two healthy years before last year he hit 41 and 43 HR’s. Mark Simon of ESPN stats did a study on how many more HR’s the Mets would have hit last year with the new RF dimensions. He determined that even with the fences moved in the Mets as a whole would have hit only 7 more HR’s and 3 of them would have been Granderson’s. So the shift from the band box in the Bronx is significant. I doubt that aging alone is at fault for such a precipitous decline . The other side of that study Simon did was the opposition would have hit 4 more HR’s total so we still would have been out homered badly in our own park and the net gain for moving the fences in would have been 3 HR’s over an 81 home game schedule. This front office is looking far and wide to not admit that the Granderson signing was a terrible mistake, add the cost of the fences, a new hitting instructor hand picked for Granderson and that 60 million 4 year contract keeps getting more expensive.
See there is another lie this front office pushed onto unsuspecting fans what did their study come up with 7 more HR’s from Granderson alone and almost 20 more for the team. I trust an independent study a lot more than an Alderson/Wilpon sponsored study.
The study by Mark Simon of ESPN stats was outlined by Adam Rubin on his New York Sports ESPN blog.
I’m not too worried about Lagares’ BABIP because he appears to be the kind of LD/doubles hitter that creates those higher numbers without large power numbers, similar to Howie Kendrick, Chris Johnson, Jose Altuve, Adam Eaton, and Leonys Martin. If the BABIP falls and the ISO rises a little, I think it might all even out.
Well, that’s what xBABIP measures – batted ball types and speed. If he was truly hitting that way in 2014, his xBABIP should have measured that.
Brian,
In projecting a players xBABIP (or just BABIP) is a player’s age taken into account?
I suspect that Granderson’s production, as he moves towards age 34, will probably decline.
As for the younger Lagares it’s more of a “Who knows?” matter. He seems to work hard, has good speed and has produced at a better level than many had projected. Can he continue to improve? I would assume that over the next few years we will get a more accurate picture of his xBABIP.
Age specifically does not factor into it.
But in a sense, it does. An older player shouldn’t make good contact quite as often or beat out infield hits on a regular basis — and those do factor in.
Grandy’s 2014 looks alot like Jason Werth’s first year in Washington— these first year/big contract struggles are not uncommon ( Beltran?).
Between the Pressure and a generally obvious idea that the guy “never got right”, I believe Grandy is a fairly certain bet to return toward “Normal Production” in 2015. With an increase from an abysmal .265 babip toward an mlb pedestrian .300 babip you get an acceptable, competitive, big league bat in the lineup.
Wright is a scarier bet—it’s tough to feel comfortable with any projection of a player/pitcher that includes a shoulder injury. You cannot trust any recovery from a serious injury or surgery—and the shoulder has remained one of the less reliable of recoveries for baseball players.
I’m intrigued by your last sentence.
Obviously, the shoulder is a big thing for pitchers. But do you know of any study related to shoulder injuries for position players? If not a full study, how about a list of players who suffered shoulder injuries that negatively altered their career?
I’ll certainly not give you a full list, and you can declare victory based on my admitted “generalizing”. Ryan Zimmerman and “almost every pitcher who ever hurts his shoulder” are, I confess, an incomplete proofing.
My observation is that the shoulder is physically complex, and the injuries and sugical repairs/rehabs are much more “one off” versus “standard” elbow and knee issues. I’ll remained convinced that a shoulder injury is more serious to a ballplayer (any sport) than any of the other appendage joints—obviously, that dis-includes the spine (and neck).
That said…I wait and hope that Wright’s recovery can be smooth and predictable….and I’d feel “better” if he had a TJ, or an ACL Repair—anything but a shoulder.
Maybe an Orthopod will weigh in????
I don’t really follow position player injuries very much. I knew that shoulders were serious stuff for pitchers but I never heard that same complaint being used for position players. If anything, I’ve heard more about wrist injuries and how they sap power. I have no dog in this race – just looking to be better informed.
I believe Jeff Zimmerman has an injury database for the past few years. Might be worth Googling to see if you can find any other shoulder injuries for hitters.
I don’t know of any studies but if you look at Howard Johnson’s pre shoulder injury stats vs his post shoulder injury stats you will see a stark contrast in power numbers . Much the same as Scott Rollins also. Shoulder injuries can be very detrimental for power hitters in particular historically.
I’m with Eraff on the shoulder thing, but don’t have any data whatsoever. I generally think knees are no problem; elbows get fixed all the time. But a guy like John Maine has shoulder issues, and there’s nothing that can be done. For a hitter, the shoulder is crucial. It’s an area of injury that causes me more worry, but I’m just a guy on a bar stool.
Another way of thinking about Wright’s injury is this: He didn’t surgery because there is no surgery; there’s no fix other than rest and hope. Niese, too, right? I would have felt better if they shut David down and performed some surgery on him in August. The thing is, I don’t think that was ever an option.
Color me concerned.
Here’s the Zimmerman link – http://www.hardballtimes.com/2014-disabled-list-information-and-so-much-more/
About 2/3 of the way down, he talks specifically about hitters and breaks them down in two charts. The first one is for those who spent 30 or fewer days on the DL and the second is for those who spent 30+ days on the DL. “Here is how hitters over- or under-performed their age-adjusted OPS comparing their year-before season to their year-after season.”
For the 30 or fewer – there was virtually no change for shoulder injuries and among body parts it ranked 9th, with arm, head and elbow being the injured parts showing the most drop off in production.
For 30+ – shoulder ranked sixth. Elbow, neck and wrist were the ones that had the biggest drop offs in production.
Wrist—very complicated…
The fact that you’ve produced solid facts to refute my theory has me even more deeply committed to my theory!!! Ha!!!!!