I think the excitement over Kendrick stems mainly from his work in the minor leagues, where he had a very low K rate as well as a .200-plus ISO. He also posted a 20 LD% last season in the majors.

He does have a strange profile to this point, but we are dealing with what basically amounts to a little less than two full season’s worth of data. The groundball/flyball distribution is strange thus far…

Kendrick:
GB: .261/.261/.280
FB: .333/.333/.658

2008 AL AVG:
GB: .243/.243/.263
FB: .218/.212/.565

Ordinarily, BABIP is higher on grounders than it is for flyballs, with flyballs obviously doing a lot more damage in the slugging department via doubles and triples.

You bring up a very good point on the distinction made between a flyball and a line drive- it is decided upon subjectively. Going back to fellow Fan Graphs author Brian Cartwright’s piece on line drives…

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php?author=11

…we find that the Angels’ home ballpark had a Line Drive Factor of 0.86, meaning that in LAA a line drive was about 14% less likely to be called than in an average venue. We don’t know why this is yet- it could be the decision made by the scorer, the offensive environment of the stadium or the talent of the batters on the team. In all probability, it’s some combination of the three.

Perhaps with a line drive less likely to be called in LA, more of Kendrick’s should-be LD’s were clasified as flyballs. What do you guys think?

for his MLB career he has a 17% K-rate and 17% LD. looking on B-R, I see that he’s hit .333 on flyballs in his career. is that sustainable? is it possible he hits a lot of flyball-fliners and that boosts his flyball BABIP? oddly his average on GBs in his career is .261, which is even stranger considering his speed. still, I can’t understand how/if he can sustain such a high BABIP.

I’d love for someone to shed some light on this for me. he has a very strange and interesting profile, and I’m wondering what I’m missing here.