Regarding B.J. Upton's Batting Average

by R.J. Anderson on Jun 1, 2009 8:44 PM EDT

We talked about BABIP and Crawford yesterday, let's do the same with B.J. today. That .204 average is mostly an illusion. People keep asking what I mean when I say he's got regressing to do. This is what I mean:

BABIP	2007	2008	2009	Career
GB	0.338	0.269	0.193	0.285
FB	0.157	0.143	0.095	0.131
LD	0.824	0.717	0.81	0.769

Those are Upton's BABIP splits sorted by batted ball type. Upton's line drives are finding holes at a far better rate than last year. Is that because he's hitting the ball more soundly? I don't know, but he does have an ISO over .500 on line drives hit. 19 hits and eight of them are for extra bases, including both of his homeruns.

You can make two arguments about Upton's lack of GB hits:

1. He's lost speed.

2. He's been unlucky.

You know which way this is going. Upton's Speed Score is above his career average and his fielding remains excellent. Either he's become the most mechanically sound baserunner within the span of a season or he's still pretty damn fast. Given that Upton's strategy for stealing bases is run on the first move and outrun the relay throw to second, I'm going to go with the latter.

Upton has hit 58 groundballs. If he were hitting his career norms he would have 17 hits on grounders instead of 11. Those six hits would make his batting average raise to .237. Great? No, but his line would raise .237/.330/.323 if all were singles. A .653 OPS isn't great, but it looks a lot better than .587.

Upton still needs to curb the strikeout bug again, but it's not like poor luck hasn't played a role in his abysmal start. The lack of power is the other thing that needs fixing. You have to figure that is more of a residual fear than anything else. I believe it was Brian Anderson who mentioned that the training staff told him to forget the first half of this year because it's going to take about that long to get his labrum at full strength.

ZiPS has B.J. with a .769 OPS through the rest of the season. I hope that's correct.

Poll

B.J. Upton's 2009 OPS from June 2nd onwards?

Over .650

25 votes

Over .750

69 votes

Over .850

46 votes

Over .950

11 votes

151 votes | Poll has closed

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Comments

I want BJ to have better results as much as the next guy,

but it is hard to really extract much data from a career average on GB rates when there is that much variance from season to season. Even excluding the drop this year the 70 point change from 07 to 08 shows that large swings are possible. We shouldn’t think two years of varying results are the bookends of what are possible.
I’ve held the belief that power hitting RH hitters can produce well above average BABIP on GB’s (think of the ripped shots between 3B and SS). RJ, I think you pointed to a piece in the offseason that ranked the best and worst BABIP on GB’s, but the focus was on speed guys being able to sustain those rates. However, the thing that stuck out to me was seeing guys like Braun, Longoria & Manny on the list as well.
Could that be the reason for the drop by BJ? I don’t know. But it does seem like he doesn’t pull the ball hard much anymore, so the GB’s end up being weak to 2B instead of rips in the hole to left. So even though it isn’t a power stat, this could largely be a product of the injury as well.

by Mulva on Jun 1, 2009 9:08 PM EDT reply actions

Decided to actually find the link I referenced above.

Holliday is another who was able to sustain the low groundball out rate. Also, BJ had one of the lowest out rates in the league in 07.
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/01/babip_slicing_a.php

by Mulva on Jun 1, 2009 9:17 PM EDT up reply actions

Your out rate tends to be low when you're getting on base 40% of the time.

Rays Win!

by Sandy Kazmir on Jun 1, 2009 10:42 PM EDT up reply actions

League Avgs

Does anyone have the league BABIPs per batted ball type? I tried to find this today and did not have luck.

by FreeZorilla on Jun 1, 2009 9:36 PM EDT reply actions

Yeah.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&year=2009&lg=MLB#traj

by R.J. Anderson on Jun 1, 2009 9:39 PM EDT up reply actions

Completely OT, but

I really don’t like off-days. Tonight has been miserably boring without the Rays or watching the Magic kick some ass. While I’m really happy the guys got a much needed day off, this sucks.

by usfraysfan on Jun 1, 2009 10:24 PM EDT reply actions

Agree that he is do for regression in BA

what concerns me is the decrease in walk rate from 15.4 to 11.8. I guess that will go up once the regression starts since pitchers will stop challenging him so much.

by RaysTheRoof on Jun 1, 2009 11:20 PM EDT reply actions

Pitchers are being very agressive with him right now with all the swings and misses.

Once he proves he can hurt pitchers that pitch deep in the strike zone I think he will start walking more again. Not that an 11.8% BB-rate is bad.

by twenty5psi on Jun 1, 2009 11:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Where can you find...

the breakdown of the number of GB, FB, and LD that BJ is posting this season?

Is he hitting more GBs, FBs, LDs…ETC.

God that is a lot of acronyms.

by BigBadBossman on Jun 1, 2009 11:59 PM EDT reply actions

Fangraphs.com

by R.J. Anderson on Jun 2, 2009 1:57 AM EDT up reply actions

You'll see it in rate form so multiply that rate times AB's to get an approximation of the quantity of each category

Rays Win!

by Sandy Kazmir on Jun 2, 2009 8:12 AM EDT up reply actions

I'd like to see BJ's splits w/ men on...RIS.

I think he might just be putting too much pressure on hisself as the leadoff guy. I’d hate to do this to CC as it could have the same effect, but what about swapping CC and BJ? With the contact CC’s having this year and the walks, it might do BJ some good if he’s hitting well with men on. RJ?

by chancedj on Jun 2, 2009 12:47 AM EDT reply actions

Better be ready to hear CC bitch if this happens

by RaysTheRoof on Jun 2, 2009 1:37 AM EDT up reply actions

At this point I would think Craw would be more likely to change his game. After getting a taste last year

he should want to do whatever it takes to get back. That and being the highest paid player on the team should be sufficient to stoke his ego. I doubt he thinks that way, though, since he never has.

Rays Win!

by Sandy Kazmir on Jun 2, 2009 8:14 AM EDT up reply actions

I hope you are right. CC maturing would be nice.

by RaysTheRoof on Jun 2, 2009 12:31 PM EDT up reply actions

If you didn't vote "Over .650" you're bad at math.

Until Next Time,
The Sports Chief

by Top Gun Numba 1 on Jun 2, 2009 10:24 AM EDT reply actions

Regression?

You cannot have a regression without first actually hitting the ball. His contact rate (1-k%) is down from 75% last season (not so great to begin with) to a mere 68% this season. When you only put the ball into play on 68% of your official at-bats, it’s almost impossible to have a decent success rate.

He’s not playing well. Why the love affair with BJ? If Crawford was having this type of “success rate,” you would skewer him RJ. Don’t try to convince me you wouldn’t. If Ben Zobrist struck out 32 times in every 100 at bats, you would want him back in AAA.

Chalking it up to “bad luck” doesn’t in any way solve the mystery of why his strikeout rate is sky rocketing. Watching the games, it is apparent he is not catching up to fast balls. I love his defense, I love his potential, and I love what he did in the playoffs last season. Right now, all he has is defense. Even his OBP becomes a liability when his AVG is this low.

by RayFanNY on Jun 2, 2009 9:05 PM EDT reply actions