June 02, 2008
The Same Swish
Beyond the Boxscore looks at why Nick Swisher is hitting so poorly this season and finds nothing really wrong with him.
Swisher's underlying stats suggest that he is not any different of a player than he has been throughout his career. He is still extremely patient, and his walk and strikeout rates are in line with his career rates. His actual BABIP is over 100 points below his expected BABIP, leading to his miserable batting average. Although he only has four homers, he has hit a lot of fly balls and has hit at least 13 balls that were caught on the warning track. Thus, it appears that Swisher has been extremely unlucky so far this year, and if he continues to play like he has thus far, his statistics will drastically improve.
So maybe Ozzie just needs to wait for his offense's luck to change.
Posted by David Pinto at
10:59 AM
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I thought it was only pitchers that don't really have control over BABIP. If hitters don't have much control, every non-strikeout or homerun would be pretty much entirely luck. Am I missing something here?
I thought it was only pitchers that don't really have control over BABIP. If hitters don't have much control, every non-strikeout or homerun would be pretty much entirely luck. Am I missing something here?
Not quite. A batter's BABIP is more or less predictable based on his distribution of batted ball types. So x% fly balls, y% grounders, z% line drives will usually yield a BABIP around .abc. When someone is hitting lots of line drives, but still has a low BABIP, then he's probably been unlucky.
Most of the time, LD% + .120 will yield you the BABIP.
Most of the time.
