Ray’s Ramblings: What Went Right?

LINE DRIVE LEADERS

Brandon Belt led baseball with a 28.7 percent mark. That’s a huge number. Only one player in baseball had a higher mark in 2014 (31.0 percent for Freddie Freeman).

Ryan Howard at 27.7 percent is crazy high. That was a career best (23.4 career).

Curtis Granderson at 27.1 percent? He had a strong year, but he’s just not that guy (career 21.1 percent).

Chase Headley was slightly better in 2014, but that’s a big time line drive number over two years for the Yankees’ third baseman.

Chris Owings has appeared in three seasons at the big league level. His lowest line drive mark has been 24.0 percent.

Brandon Phillips had a career-best mark of 24.9 percent. He’s been in the big leagues since 2002.

Chris Davis always strikes out but he hits the ball hard at over 24.5 percent the last two seasons and he’s had three seasons out of five over that mark. 

BABIP LEADERS

A rookie led the way in Odubel Herrera. He has no shot to maintain that mark. Just ain’t happening, but what an effort in Year 1.  

As great a hitter as Miguel Cabrera is, a .384 mark isn’t sustainable. His career mark is about as good as one will ever see, but it’s still “just” .348. The .384 mark from ’15 was a career best.

Dee Gordon lives off his wheels and that speed certainly helps sustain a higher than normal BABIP mark. Still, he’s not going .383 again. His career mark is .346 which happens to exactly match his career mark.

Just a point. Any player with a mark over .350 is at serious risk of a pullback in the following season. In plain English, don’t expect anyone over the .350 mark to repeat it next season. Another point: The league average is about .290-300 and players tend to set their own base lines (some are always above the mark, others always above).

Nelson Cruz owns a .305 career mark, and in the three previous seasons before the 2015 campaign the mark was never higher than .301.

Yunel Escobar’s mark was above .282 for the first time in four seasons. The mark was also a career best and .029 points above where it had ever been before. Yep, not happening again in 2016.

POWER STROKE 

From the Stats City Sabermetric Primer –

ISOLATED POWER, or ISO (created by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth) Slugging % - Batting Average: A sabermetric measure which attempts to describe a hitter's overall effectiveness by measuring the player's ability to generate extra base hits. Batting average measures all hits without any attention being paid to what type of knock they are. SLG measures all bases earned (including singles). ISO measures only extra-base hits while excluding the other hits. The historical average for ISO is around .120, with .080 being roughly equivalent to a singles hitter, while anyone over .200 should be considered a power hitter. ISO was apparently created by baseball great Branch Rickey, along with Allan Roth in the 1950’s, though they termed it “Power Average.”

Here are the 2015 leaders:

Bryce Harper was out of control good as was Chris Davis. Numbers in the .300s are not common.

Mike Trout just missed out at .290. It was a career best (previous was .274).

Nolan Arenado had a .138 mark as a rookie. The mark jumped to .213 in 2014. It spiked to .287 in 2015. That’s a shocking number given his career performance up to that point.

David Ortiz just won’t stop hitting. Despite advancing age, his .280 mark was a three-year high and better than his .263 career mark.

JDM pushed his strong mark of .238 from 2014 even higher up to .253 in 2015. Impressive.

Yoenis Cespedes was never over .214 his previous three seasons and in 2013-14 the mark was in the .190’s.

Albert Pujols had a four-year high at .236. The mark was in the .180s the previous two seasons.

A-Rod had been under .186 for three straight years before busting out for a .235 mark.

Matt Carpenter hit 25 homers his first four seasons. He hit 28 in 2015. In 2014 his ISO mark was .103. He more than doubled that in 2015. That never happens (he had never hit .170 before this past campaign.

WALKS

Jose Bautista was fourth in baseball with a 17 percent walk rate. His strikeout rate was 16.5 percent. That’s right, more walks (110) and than strikeouts (106). Bautista wasn’t the BB/K ratio leader, though.

1.18 – Michael Brantley

1.11 – Ben Zobrist

1.08 – Buster Posey

1.06 – Joey Votto

1.04 – Jose Bautista

0.95 – Bryce Harper

0.94 – Miguel Cabrera

Bryce Harper was about 11 percent of the time heading into the 2015 season. Amongst all the great things he did this season was walk even more as he pushed the walk rate up to 19.0 percent (second in baseball to the 20.6 percent mark of Joey Votto). That patience led to a whopper of an OBP (.460).

STRIKEOUT RATE

Daniel Murphy led baseball with a 7.1 percent strikeout rate (strikeouts divided by plate appearances). Here’s that leaderboard.

7.1 – Daniel Murphy

8.2 – Andrelton Simmons

8.3 – Buster Posey

8.6 – Michael Brantley

9.7 – Jose Altuve

9.8 – Yangervis Solarte

Murphy struck out 38 times in 538 plate appearances.

Buster Posey only whiffed 52 times, a career low, and he still only hit 19 homers.

Jose Altuve had a 7.5 percent mark in 2014 (10.5 percent for his career).

Yangervis Solarte only walked 34 times all season, pretty much always putting the ball in play (56 strikeouts in 571 plate appearances).

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