DFS PLAYBOOK PRO – An exciting new offering from the Alarm is here! It’s the DFS Playbook Pro. I will be doing a daily breakdown of the hitters –Hitting Coach – while Howard Bender looks into the Pitchers (Pitching Coach). You can find the link to the Hitting and Pitching articles under the DFS Playbook pro tab at the top right of the screen.
OTHER LINKS TO BOOKMARK
Yesterday I looked at HR/F ratios and today we’ll take a peek into some out of whack BABIP marks that might signal impending doom or likely success.
WHAT IS BABIP AND HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND IT?
I wrote about this topic in the 2015 Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide. Here are some quick highlights from that article just in case you are new to the BABIP game.
BABIP, also referred to as a player's hit rate, is the rate at which batted balls end up as base hits. There is one caveat with BABIP – it removes home runs from the equation because technically the ball isn't in play on a home run (it never lands in the field of play). Here is the simple formula in play for the measure we call BABIP.
(H-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF)
A few points to consider when it comes to BABIP.
(1) The major league average for BABIP is traditionally in the .290-300 range. The league leaders are usually in the .375-.390 range. Here are the leaders the last three seasons: 2012 (Dexter Fowler .390), 2013 (Chris Johnson .394) and 2014 (Starling Marte .373).
(2) Players tend to establish their own level of BABIP production over the years. Whether good or bad, players tend to establish a fairly consistent pattern over the course of multiple seasons (a rolling three season time frame gives a very solid gauge).
(3) A player who is performing at a rate that is below his established level can be said to be hitting in a bit of "bad" luck. A player who is performing at a rate that is above his established level can be said to be hitting in "good" luck. This is also far too simplistic but it suits the purpose of this piece.
So let’s look at some curent BABIP marks.
.454 – Dee Gordon
NO player who has ever lived has posted a mark that high. Ever. Repeat – ever. Gordon owns a career mark of .342 which is already stupendous but it’s still more than .100 points below his current rate. There is going to be a massive correction here, the kind that could drop Gordon’s batting average .075 or more points the rest of the way. He’s been insanely good/lucky/fortunate to this point. Speed helps you to beat out grounders which can boost BABIP, but not like this.
.422 – Kris Bryant
No one ever posts a mark this high. Ever. Unlike Gordon, Bryant doesn’t have the same set of wheels to beat out bounders. He also strikes out a ton with 40 in 107 at-bats. When his BABIP falls his average could cave making his current .290 batting average a high water mark this season. Somehow Bryant has a 17.6 percent line drive rate, two points below the league average, and his BABIP is still stratospheric. Yes he hits the ball hard, but there’s simply no planet in the universe where he’s going to be this good over an entire season.
.418 – Brandon Belt
Belt has a 31.7 percent line drive rate which totally supports the BABIP he has. Unfortunately, say it with me, no one who has ever lived has posted a 31.7 percent line drive rate for the course of an entire season. Just doesn’t happen. Pretty sure he also doesn’t hold on to his 45 percent hard hit ball rate, another stratospheric number. He’s simply squaring everything up right now though he’s bound to slow, appreciably.
.416 – Avisail Garcia
Never walks, seven in 35 games, and not going to hold a 31.4 percent line drive rate. He does own a .349 career mark in the bigs and .365 in the minors (2011-14) so maybe his fall will be a little softer than some of the others on this list.
.400 – Jorge Soler
As I briefly noted above, it’s extremely rate for anyone to post a .400 mark. Extremely. When that guy has 56 punchouts in 147 at-bats the odds shrink even further – like down to impossible. When you toss in another 31 percent line drive rate… you get the picture. Despite all that greatness Soler is still batting just .265 right now. He needs to show some marked improvement or his batting average could get eaten up.
.394 – DJ LeMahieu
The Rockies’ second sacker is a career .280 hitter who is batting .322. Has he taken his game to a new level this season? Not really. Walk rate, strikeout rate, Isolated Power, all of that is normal stuff. So why the increase in productivity? Hello Mr. BABIP. He’s the owner of a career .336 mark and the last two seasons have seen him produce efforts of .328 and .322.
Others in line for a major dip.
.381 – Angel Pagan
.379 – Freddy Galvis
.378 – Bryce Harper
.376 – Marcus Semien
.372 – Nelson Cruz
Here are some players on the other end, guys that have stupid low BABIP marks as of this writing.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday at 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 7 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).