Aneury Update

Montgomery starter Aneury Rodriguez had another solid night of results hurling a 7 inning complete game shutout against the Huntsville stars last night.  This was Aneury's third straight start without surrendering an earned run. Rodriguez continues to have BABIP luck on his side as he allowed only 4 hits with one strikeout and two walks. A silly 19 of the 20 fielded outs were of the flyball variety. Here is a matrix of the three starts:

Using a rough estimate for BABIP of Outs-K+Hits= Ball In Play, we come up with 52 balls in play which would lead to a BABIP estimate of .115 over this stretch, certainly not sustainable.

You can see most of his outs are generate via flyballs. Whats missing from this equation is the fact he has allowed 0 HR over the span of his past 34 flyouts generated. At the major league level, HR/FB is usually sustained around 10% so Rodriguez has been a bit lucky. However the large number of flyouts also explains some of the lower BABIP number as flyballs are the batted ball type with the lowest BABIP (usually in the mid to high .100's).  

In summary, the results have been quite nice for Aneury Rodriguez of late, but some of the processes lead me to believe he is not yet a dominant AA pitcher. He was probably the victim of some bad luck earlier the year which is regressing closer to his true takent level. Rodriguez is young, so I am hopeful he can build on this but it will take some process improvements.