Comments on: Rollins’ Horrid BABIP

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:34:41 +0000

Sorry for so many posts. But there seems to be a problem with Rollins’ Fly Ball numbers for his years 2000. 2001 & 2002 on B-Ref. So his career Fly Ball numbers are off.

Actually all players’ Fly Ball numbers for the years 2000-2002 seem to be wrong.

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:17:03 +0000

So if you use BABIP vs BABIP, Rollins Fly Ball BABIP for 2009 of .094 was way below the league average of .142. I suspect he was hitting a lot of easy to catch fly balls, which matches what Bill said.

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:07:06 +0000

In the 1st chart you labeled BABIP, the numbers listed for Rollins are his BA numbers not his BABIP numbers from B-Ref.com. For example, Rollins has a career BABIP on Fly Balls of .095 while his BA is the .147 you listed.

For the NL average you used BABIP not BA.

Is there any reason you used BA and not BABIP for Rollins?

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:18:46 +0000

Hi Dave,

Awhile back, either on this site or on Baseball Analysts, you posted a line plot in which the 95% CI was indicated with shading (I think, if my memory serves, you were portraying the relationship between run value and the movement of pitches, but I could be wrong). In any case, I’m wondering how you did this in R. Was it with the polygon command? I’d like to produce something similar for an unrelated project, but I have no idea how.

Barry

By: Mike Green

Mike Green — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:10:16 +0000

His career BABIP is actually poor, given his speed and pop. His IF hit % is very low (about 1/2 of Victorino’s). Is he particularly slow out of the box?

By: AB

AB — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:04:12 +0000

His overall GB% was way down in favor of a lot of FBs, which is going to have a negative impact on BABIP. Watching him every day though he really struggled with his approach at the plate…..pressed for a lot of the season, got too pull happy, dropped back shoulder etc. He was trying to swing his way out of his extended slump. This hurt his walk rate too.He is usually a pull hitter but he got way too over-pull happy for a lot of the year

To be honest watching him I don’t know what to make of it either. He still looks quick inside and his K rate is not up, which you’d think it would be if his swing just got way longer than it was. Hoping it was just a bizarre, bad year

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:48:18 +0000

Some of it was bad luck but a lot (especially in the first half of the year or so) was Rollins just getting under the ball a ton (from the left) or over it (from the right) and not hitting the ball particularly hard even when it was a line drive / ground ball.

By: Dave Allen

Dave Allen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:23:02 +0000

Good point about the handedness issue I should have mentioned it. Over his career he has a BABIP aginast RHP of .295 and against LHP of .286, not that much different. This past year it has been .265 against RHP and .213 against LHPs. Lower against both, but really bad against LHPs.

To get the batted ball splits by platoon you have to pull it out of the GameDay data yourself, that I know of.

By: truth

truth — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:15:26 +0000

If you plug Rollins’ stats from this year into the xBABIP tool, it comes out to .317. Looks like he could be fairly undervalued heading into next season.

By: scatterbrian

scatterbrian — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:35:58 +0000

Interesting breakdown Dave. Is there batted ball data available for platoon splits? He was pretty weak vs. LHP this season, more so than in the past. I guess I’m wondering if he was trying to go to right as a RH hitter more often. Then again, his first half was absolutely horrible.