BABIP

[smg58]

One thing that's giving me some optimism is that much of the lineup has a batting average on balls in play that is unsustainably low:



Alonso .199

Lindor .238

Alvarez .239

McNeil .292 (he's at .327 for his career)

Pham .275

Escobar .260

Canha .275

Baty .284

Vogelbach .278



Other than Nimmo (.357) and Marte (.311, but he's shown zero power to this point), the Mets are underachieving fairly severely in this regard. That has to get better, right?

Edited June 13, 2023 by Guest

[Frayed Knot]

I dunno.

It seems to me that they've been hitting a ton of pop-ups -- particularly Pete and Lindor -- and it's unlikely that those are just going to start falling in anytime soon.

[Edgy MD]

Marte is weird. He seemingly has almost a cosmic control over the Mets lineup. When he's going good, they're all going good. When he's flailing, they're all failing.



He can also play well while not looking particularly good, getting hits on pitches he shouldn't swing at, or ripping one into the gap after getting badly fooled on the two previous pitches. Or stealing second after coming into first like he's got a refrigerator on his back.



He's a tough read. I'm not altogether convinced he's healthy.



As for BABIP, I've never been a fan of counting on that statistic to normalize.

[vtmet7]

Edgy MD wrote: As for BABIP, I've never been a fan of counting on that statistic to normalize.

people have always told me "everyone has a BABIP of .300...if it's not, they are either getting unlucky or lucky"...



IMO, that's hogwash...guys that hit hard line drives with being able to hit the ball the other way, or guys that have speed and have level swings are going to have higher BABIP...guys that are slow and focus on pulling the ball or trying to hit the ballpark are going to have lower BABIP because when it doesn't go out, they tend to hit popups or hit the ball right at infielders



an example: Derek Jeter (hate to praise Captain Fistpump) when he was "young" and relatively fast:

1995-2009: BABIP of .360;

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01.shtml#1995-2009-sum:batting_advancedhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01.shtml#1995-2009-sum:batting_advanced

2013-20114 (age 39 and 40, slowed down a bit both with his legs and probably his bat speed): BABIP of .285;

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01.shtml#2013-2014-sum:batting_advancedhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01.shtml#2013-2014-sum:batting_advanced



another example:

Anthony Rizzo, hard hitting lefty with extreme pull tendencies and tends to swing for the fences

2022 (extreme shift was still legal): BABIP of .216;

2023 (extreme shift no longer legal, which means that they don't have 5 fielders ganged up in shallow Right/Center field: BABIP of .317;

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rizzoan01.shtmlhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rizzoan01.shtml

[ashie62]

About a week ago Marte scored from first. He was running his best but I thought he was laboring. Just didn't seem right



He might be sore from the neck injury and have something else going on even to the point it has affected his defensive play, balls getting by him and such

[A Boy Named Seo]

Edgy MD wrote: Marte is weird. He seemingly has almost a cosmic control over the Mets lineup. When he's going good, they're all going good. When he's flailing, they're all failing. He can also play well while not looking particularly good, getting hits on pitches he shouldn't swing at, or ripping one into the gap after getting badly fooled on the two previous pitches. Or stealing second after coming into first like he's got a refrigerator on his back. He's a tough read. I'm not altogether convinced he's healthy. As for BABIP, I've never been a fan of counting on that statistic to normalize.

He is weird. I thought his lack of power was maybe exit velocity stuff, but turns out he's never hit the ball hard (88.4 for his career), but his EV is actually up this year from last (87.5 from 86.8). The power outage makes you wonder if the legs are bad but the 19 steals make you think they're not. No damn idea.