Things are not looking good for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers entered last night’s game eight games behind San Diego in the NL West and five and a half games behind the Giants. Baseball Prospectus had their playoff odds at a mere 1.9%. The trades the Dodgers made clearly show that they felt that they were in the race. With San Diego and San Francisco both winning last night, yesterday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies was utterly key for the Dodgers.

After a three run rally in the top of the eighth inning that put the Dodgers ahead 9-2, the team had to feel good. With a mere 1% chance to win at this point, the Phillies chipped away in the eighth against Ronald Belisario, Kenley Jansen, and George Sherrill, putting up four runs on four singles as well as a Ben Francisco double.

Of course, the rally still meant that the Phillies would need to put up at least three runs in the ninth to make any of it matter, and they would have to do that against Jonathan Broxton– the same Johnathan Broxton who has the lowest FIP (2.35) among qualified relievers over the past three years. Even though Broxton hasn’t had the same kind of shutdown track record as, say,Mariano Rivera, or taking a step down, Joakim Soria, Broxton is clearly an excellent pitcher. With an average pitcher on the mound, the Phillies win expectancy was still tiny, at 4.6%. Against Broxton, that number comes down even farther.

When it comes down to it, though, odds between 1 and 20 and 1 in 30 aren’t that terrible, particularly compared to the 1 in 100 odds facing the Phillies entering the eighth. Broxton isn’t exactly a control artist, as his career and season walk rates are both above three. But one wouldn’t exactly predict that Broxton would load the bases via a HBP and two walks.

What happened next can hardly be attributed to Broxton, who did his job in inducing a Ben Francisco ground ball to third base. If it wasn’t for Casey Blake letting what should’ve been an easy play go five-hole, the Dodgers could either have gotten an out at home or possibly turned a 5-4-3 double play. Instead of either bases loaded, one out, and a three run lead or the ideal runner on third, two out, and a two run lead. Blake’s error resulted in two runs scoring and runners on first and second.

The result of the play was a 47.8% win expectancy for the Dodgers. Were the Dodgers to record the out at home, their win expectancy would’ve been 88.6%; a double play would have left them with a 93.7% win expectancy. These totals are increased somewhat by the presence of Broxton on the mound, but the error was clearly extremely costly for LA, much moreso than Broxton’s loading of the bases, which brought the team’s win expectancy down from 96.4% to 66.9%.

Still, the Dodgers were up by a run, and even with runners on and nobody out, the game was essentially a coin flip. Carlos Ruiz tipped the coin in the Phillies favor with a deep double to left field, plating both Francisco and Jayson Werth, and the Phillies won the game. As much as the Dodgers needed to win this game to really have any hope whatsoever of making the playoffs, this game was probably more important for Philadelphia. The victory allowed the Phillies to keep within two games of the Braves in the NL East race and within one of the Giants in the Wild Card, with each team winning last night.

[Click to enlarge]

As we can see in the Game Graph above, this one looked like it was over in the late innings. But there’s a reason that the Phillies’ win expectancy never read “0.00%” and the Dodgers’ never read “100.00%.” After 8.5 innings with only one play with a leverage index about 2.0, the 9th inning provided two of the most exciting possible plays in baseball, with leverage indexes above 5.0. It just shows that, as the legendary Yogi Berra said, “it ain’t over until it’s over.”

The editors of FanGraphs invite you to put the following in your pipe and smoke it.

Or just read it with your eyes. You choose.

(NERD scores in parentheses.)

Friday, August 13
Milwaukee (Yovani Gallardo, 9) at Colorado (Jorge de la Rosa, 9) | 9:10pm ET
• Casey McGehee entered Wednesday’s game versus Arizona batting .272. Entering play today, that number’s risen to .285 — mostly on account of he’s gone 9 for his last frigging 9. “But, Cistulli,” maybe you’re saying, “didn’t you even know that batting average is so 1997?” “Well,” I reply, “it also makes up about 80% of a player’s on-base percentage, so stick it.”
• Jorge de la Rosa currently sports a 5.01 ERA, but only a 3.73 xFIP. Impress your friends and/or enemies by reciting this loudly in a public place.
• If I had my druthers: We could all impress each other without even trying.

Toronto (Marc Rzepczynski, N/A) at Los Angeles Americans (Scott Kazmir, 2) | 10:05pm ET
• Hear me now and believe me whenever you want: this game isn’t being featured because of Scott Kazmir’s sweet pitching skills. Kazmir has below-average strikeout, walk, and groundball rates. No, the real pleasure will be watching Toronto, currently the only team with a collective ISO greater than .200 (specifically, .210), take massive hacks at Kazmir’s junk*.
• Jose Bautista hit his league-leading 36th dongpiece last night. Hear him roar!
• Ah, man: I love the Rze and so can you. Like Tom Cruise in a certain 1983 cinematic masterpiece, Marc Rzepczynski has all the right moves. He doesn’t qualify for a NERD score yet, but has a 3.41 xFIP against a 7.15 ERA. And he’s only 25. And even the vowels in his name are consonants.
• Peter Bourjos! Peter Bourjos! Peter Bourjos! (Yes, this is what passes for baseball analysis these days.)

*And by “junk,” I mean his pitches, of course.

Saturday, August 14
San Diego (Mat Latos, 10) at San Francisco (Madison Bumgarner, 7) | 4:10pm ET
• Damn, Mat Latos, you’re only 23 and have one of the best xFIPs (3.56) among starting pitchers.
• Damn, Madison Bumgarner, you’re better than I thought you were going to be.
• Damn, Ryan Ludwick, who died and gave you a career 7.9 UZR/150 in right field?

Oakland (Trevor Cahill, 5) at Minnesota (Brian Duensing, 4) | 7:10pm ET
• Neither Cahill nor Duensing are real edge-of-your-seat exciting pitchers. Both are below average in terms of swinging-strike rates, and hence K/9. But they’re also pretty-really good at inducing grounders. On the season, Cahill is sporting a 56.4% groundball rate; Duensing, 52.4%. How many will they induce tonight?!? Tune in to find out!
• In case you didn’t hear, Oakland recently promoted prospect Chris Carter to the big club. I had the opportunity to see all 6’5″, 230 of Carter this spring when Triple-A Sacramento visited Portland, Ore. Here was my first thought: “I could totally take that guy.” Here was my second: “I must be pretty sauced right now.”
• If I had my druthers: I could totally take that guy.

Boston (Jon Lester, 9) at Texas (Colby Lewis, 6) | 8:05pm ET
• Lester has groundball rate of 54.3%. That’s surprising to me, and, because I’m not that special, I’m guessing it surprises you and you and you. How’s he doing it? Well, I asked the internet that question — specifically, StatCorner’s awesome scouting tool — and here’s what I found. (All pitches are graded on 20-80 scouting scale in each cat).

Pitch	%	Sp	K	BB	GB
FB	58%	93	70	60	75
SI	16%	89	80	65	50
CB	14%	77	65	45	70
CH	8%	85	60	25	75
Overall	--	--	70	50	75

What we find here is that, with the exception of Lester’s sinker, he’s getting near league-best groundball rates on all his pitches. Now you know!
• Colby Lewis is dynamic. That’s it: he’s just frigging dynamic.
• If I had my druthers: Someone would design a plane or something modeled after Colby Lewis’s dynamism.

Sunday, August 15
Cleveland (Justin Masterson, 8) at Seattle (Felix Hernandez, 10) | 1:05pm ET
• Fact One: Justin Masterson has 63.4% groundball rate.
• Fact Two: The Cleveland infield has had a whole lot of Jason Donald and Asdrubal Cabrera and Mark Grudzielanek and Anderson Hernandez and Jhonny Peralta and Andy Marte up in it.
• Fact Three: Literally, all those guys have negative UZRs. Yeah, it takes some time for UZR to stabilize, but that’s a bad trend, at the very least.
• Fact Four: Justin Masterson has a .347 BABIP against.
• You fill the blanks, America.

Baltimore (Jake Arrieta, 1) at Tampa Bay (Jeremy Hellickson, N/A) | 1:40pm ET
• He’s only pitched 14 innings, so whatever, but here are the (very impressive) nerd scouting numbers for Hellickson. (Again, per StatCorner, on the 20-80 scouting scale.)

Pitch	%	Sp	K	BB	GB
FB	51%	91	65	25	80
CH	27%	81	80	80	35
CB	18%	75	80	80	80
Overall	--	--	80	70	80

• Who’m I kidding? I’m just watching this so the computer-robot known as R.J. Anderson doesn’t freak out on me.
• If I had my druthers: R.J. would someday get his wish to become a real boy.

Milwaukee (Manny Parra, 7) at Colorado (Ubaldo Jimenez, 8) | 3:10pm ET
• Dear Future Self, Is Casey McGehee 18 for his last 18 now? What’s it like where you are? Do they have frozen yogurt still?
• Manny Parra is a lefty who throws 92-94 mph and has a killer split-finger pitch. He’s also someone who’s been cursed by God, as his career .352 BABIP-against confirms.
• Experiment: Sit at a sports bar and tell the dude next to you that Ubaldo Jimenez isn’t the best pitcher in the majors. Wait for his reaction.

Lyle Overbay passed through waivers yesterday which registers as a non-shocking development given the Jays inactivity in moving him to another team over the last year-plus. Overbay has a quiet genius about him in that he was consistent throughout his career.

In 2004, his first full season in the majors, he posted a WAR of 2.4. The next year? 2.5. The year after that? 2.5. Then he had a down (and shortened) season with the Blue Jays, but after that, his WAR have been 2 and 2.4. This season he’s on pace for around 1.5 wins, depending on playing time, but his career WAR should top the 14 mark without hassle.

Overbay’s consistency got me wondering: just how common are two-win first basemen? So, I went back and looked at 2002-2009 using our leaderboards with a per-season minimum of 300 plate appearances at first base. I tallied each year up by the amount of players who had at least five WAR or greater and so on. Each player is only counted once; meaning Albert Pujols is in the 5+ WAR column only and not duplicated in the 4+, 3+, and 2+ columns as well. Here’s the graph:

Last season appears to be a golden age for first basemen, both elite and above average alike. Let’s take this a step further, though, and combine the first basemen into two groups: those who produced 2 or more WAR and those who produced fewer than 2 wins. From there, let’s make it interesting and make the grouping in which Overbay belonged to during each season yellow. Here’s how that looks:

What does this tell us? Well, besides the obvious – that Overbay was often above 2 WAR – that he was in the first base minority in 2008, 2005, and 2004. Maybe, then, it’s not a surprise that he was traded following the 2005 season, and trade rumors heated up for him once against after the 2008 season.

Rare is it when a pitcher’s ERA, FIP, and xFIP are in a state of complete accord. Nearly as rare is Freddy Garcia pitching more than 100 innings in any given season during these twilight years of his career. All together, I suppose that makes Garcia’s 2010 season an exotic bird with colorful – if frangible – feathers. Twenty-one starts into the season, Garcia holds a 4.90 ERA, 4.90 FIP, and 4.70 xFIP with 119 innings pitched.

The last year-plus has been a tortuous path for Garcia. Signed to a minor league deal with the New York Mets, Garcia made starts for their organization before dismissal. Garcia then latched on with the team he spent the 2004-2006 seasons with and eventually made nine starts, pitching well enough for the Sox to exercise his option, worth $1 million with $2 million in additional performance-based incentives.

Garcia’s fastball still lacks life and sits at a career low 87.9 miles per hour. He’s adjusted by using it a career low 30.5% of the time. For comparison, his next lowest usage rate came last season at 43.4%. Garcia is using a combination of his changeup and split-fingered fastball instead and our pitch run values have his changeup as his best pitch and the splitter as his second best – albeit in the negative, as are his other three offerings.

When Garcia gets ahead in the count, his fastball has the tendency to become a rumor. He uses it 15% of the time or less in each of the two strike counts with the exception of 3-2 counts. It’s only when he falls behind that Garcia leans heavily on his heater, which is about as hot as the unthawed. It should come as no surprise that one-third of Garcia’s homers have come when he trails and another 11 on even counts. When he gets ahead, batters have a .373 slugging percentage against him, when he falls behind, batters are slugging .536; league average for those situations is a .306 slugging when the pitcher leads and a .498 slugging when the batter leads. In other words: when Garcia falls behind, his offerings are being smoked, and he is even being hit harder than normal when he does his job.

Those statistics come with the territory for right-handed starting pitchers with Ronald Reagan era fastballs. Not that Tupac Shakur era fastballs guarantee success, but so much of pitching is luck-based already, having a slow fastball just shaves the margin of error a little more. That Garcia himself acknowledges those limitations in an implicit manner is one of the reasons he’s been able to succeed as an above replacement level pitcher this season.

And that’s something all the metrics agree on.

On the surface, Johan Santana has had a solid season, putting up a 3.06 ERA supported by a 3.47 FIP and a 3.75 tERA. However, that masks a miniscule HR/FB rate of 4.6% and an xFIP of 4.53. If his HR/FB were to return to its normal levels – around 9% – Santana’s new inability to miss bats would likely be exposed. His swinging strike rate, never below 11% since 2002, has dropped to 8.9%, dangerously close to average for such a previously dominant pitcher as Santana. Unsurprisingly, his strikeout rate has dropped in tandem from 7.9 to 6.2, resulting in the higher xFIP.

Santana looked more like the Johan of old today against the Colorado Rockies, racking up 10 strikeouts against only two walks in a complete game shutout against one of the better offensive clubs in the National League. It was Johan’s old standby, the changeup, which made fools out of Rockies hitters. Santana pulled the string 40 times on opposing batters today, with 30 of them going for strikes. Rockies batters swung and missed a whopping 11 times, a 27.5% rate. That’s nearly double the 14.3 whiff (misses per pitch thrown) rate on Santana’s changeup this season to date.

Santana’s fastball didn’t show any more life, mixing around 86-90 mph and only drawing one swinging strike in 27 pitches. That’s right, Santana threw 13 more changeups than fastballs in this outing, a striking deviation from his average distribution of 58% fastballs to 27% changeups, with the remaining portion fitting in as sliders. It’s possible that a key to continued success for Santana will be a steady diet of changeups to opposing batters.

For the Mets and their fans, some of whom have compared Santana to the slightly less impressive Jarrod Washburn (and quite aptly, looking at Washburn ’09 vs. Santana ’10 here), this has to be encouraging. The fastball velocity is still down, but the changeup was working its former magic today. For the Mets brass in particular, who will pay Santana at least $77.5 million through 2014, this start has to bring some smiles.

Yesterday, Chipper Jones suffered an ACL tear while making a spectacular play at third base; he’s almost certainly out for the rest of the year, and considering that he was retiring considering retirement at the end of the season, there’s a possibility that we have seen his last game in a major league uniform. (Jones’s agent has said he “doesn’t believe [Chipper] will simply retire without attempting to first rehab the injury,” so this is just preliminary speculation at this point.) Chipper Jones spent much of the year in the offensive doldrums, but had begun to heat up in the month of August, where he was 12-for-30 with three homers in nine games for the Braves. So the Braves will miss his bat. But they’ll miss his presence even more.

Chipper Jones was drafted by General Manager Bobby Cox as the first overall pick in 1990, famously going ahead of fireballer Todd Van Poppel in a draft-day override. Since then, as Jack Moore has written, he has been the greatest franchise player — has provided the most value to the original team that drafted him* — in modern history. His former teammates Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz will probably go into the Hall first, but he’ll be remembered as the franchise’s best hitter since Henry Aaron.

(*As reader Blue points out in the comments section, this should read, “… has provided the most value to the original team that drafted him with the first overall selection in the draft.”)

He’s had a strange career, though. His career began with an ACL tear, just before the start of the 1994 season, and looks like it might end on one. He won one MVP, and received votes in 11 other seasons, but never again finished higher than sixth. Until his 36th birthday, he never led the league in any traditional stat, until he finally won a batting title in 2008. (As a result, using the old Bill James Hall of Fame tools, he’s way above the Hall of Fame norm in HOF Standards and HOF Monitor, but way below the norm in Grey Ink and Black Ink.) From his rookie year in 1995 until 2003, Chipper Jones played in more than 94% of his team’s games every year; since then, he only once played in as many as 140 games. This will mark his first trip to the DL since July 2008, but since then, there have been ten separate occasions on which he has missed multiple consecutive games. While he’s been one of the best-hitting third basemen of all time, his defense has been below-average at best. And his admitted marital infidelity is pretty hard to defend, as well.

Still, as he’s gotten older, he’s been an unselfish leader on the team. In 2002, just three years after his MVP, he voluntarily moved from third base to left field to accommodate the team’s acquisition of Vinny Castilla; then, two years after playing his last inning at third base, he moved back. The left field move is commonly blamed for his numerous leg problems over the years, as they began to crop up shortly after he began playing his new position. On numerous occasions, he has offered to restructure his contract with the Braves to increase their payroll flexibility.

By now, most fans and baseball writers have gotten used to the idea of Chipper Jones as a Hall of Famer, so he probably won’t run into the problems that Ron Santo has had. But they may not realize quite how good Chipper has been. Last offseason, blogger Mac Thomason noted that, in Lee Sinins’ Sabermetric Encyclopedia last offseason, Jones led all third basemen in the modern era in Runs Created per Game and was in a virtual dead heat with Eddie Mathews at the top of the list for Runs Created Above Average. Chipper is 37th in all-time WAR, and sixth among third basemen (seventh if you consider Alex Rodriguez a 3B), behind Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs, Brooks Robinson, and George Brett.

Thomason goes on to say:

Chipper is the greatest player in Atlanta Braves history — and they’ve had some pretty good players. He’s clearly ahead of Dale Murphy, and even ahead of Hank Aaron (not counting the Milwaukee years). The only player who could have a case, because they’re so different, is Greg Maddux, and Chipper’s Braves career is twice as long. Scored purely as a hitter, he might be the best third baseman of all-time; he has the highest slugging percentage of any third baseman, and the highest OPS, and is third or fourth in on-base (depending upon if you count Edgar Martinez). I’d still rank Schmidt first, for a number of reasons, but second is muddled, and Chipper has a pretty good argument.

Whatever the future holds, he has had an incredible career.

Last week, Zack Greinke spoke pretty candidly about his thoughts on the Royals organization. Needless to say, he’s not a big fan of where the organization is currently at. Years of losing have a way of taking a toll on a player’s loyalty.

As I flew up to New York last week for our live event, I was pondering Greinke’s comments. As most people know, he’s part of the stable of pitchers that like advanced statistics, and will look at sites like this one to evaluate how well they’re performing. He quoted FIP at his Cy Young Award press conference last year. Odds are pretty good that not only does he look at his own stats here on the site, but he looks at some of the other metrics available and some of the commentary as well.

Needless to say, none of it has been very favorable towards the Royals the last few years. If Greinke is looking at his own FIP, he probably knows that Yuniesky Betancourt ranks as one of the worst defensive shortstops in baseball by UZR, and yet he had to sit and watch as his team traded for Betancourt to try and turn ground balls into outs. Imagine the frustration of a guy who is being told to pitch to contact believing that the shortstop his team is excited about acquiring has the range of a wilted fern.

So, when someone asked me at the event on Saturday what I thought the effects of sabermetric ideas and statistics gaining traction with players was, this was the first thing that came to my mind. It is certainly not our intent to cause discord between players and their organizations, but I have to wonder if part of Greinke’s frustration with the Royals stems from the fact that the advanced statistics that interest him paint a poor picture of almost everything that Kansas City does.

If more players begin to take an interest in evaluating themselves and their peers in this way, it will be interesting to see if there’s a trickle-up effect. In some sense, it’s easy for Dayton Moore or Ed Wade to dismiss the criticism of their moves as just the rantings of fans, but it is a much more delicate situation when that frustration is coming from your best player. Will owners be willing to continue hiring GMs who ignore UZR if their pitchers are using it to determine how good the defenders behind them are?

Perhaps Greinke, Bannister, and Scherzer are just outliers, and we won’t see any serious uptick in this kind of statistical usage by big league players. That’s certainly possible. On the other hand, though, if this becomes more prevalent in major league clubhouses, it could present an interesting dilemma for teams that don’t really want to use these kinds of numbers to make decisions. Pressure from your players is a lot different than pressure from your fans.

In the 2008-2009 off-season Pat Burrell was in an excellent situation. After nine seasons in Philadelphia he had finally won a World Series. He had endured plenty of criticism while playing there, including particularly fervent booing in 2003. At age 31, he had options — including a possible return to the only team he had ever known. But in mid-December the Phillies signed Raul Ibanez to a three-year contract, which effectively ended Burrell’s time in red pinstripes. That put him in front of 29 other teams, most intriguingly the 14 AL teams that could use him as a DH.

Looking for another championship he signed with the team the Phillies beat in 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays. The marriage seemed perfect. Tampa Bay didn’t get much production out of the DH spot during their pennant year, employing Cliff Floyd while he wasn’t injured and a ragtag bunch of below-average DHs when he wasn’t. Adding Burrell would give them a right-handed power bat to complement left-handed first baseman Carlos Pena. Best of all, it meant that Burrell’s defense would no longer subtract from his overall value.

Nothing went according to plan. The Rays spent most of the year in third place, trailing the Red Sox and the Yankees in the AL East. Their run differential made it seem as though they were perpetually poised to make a charge, but that never materialized. Burrell didn’t help the cause, turning in the worst season of his career. Even with his poor defense, a career -44.9 UZR in left field, he was able to produce at least 2 WAR in each of his seasons with Philadelphia, save for his ugly 2003 campaign. In 2009, with no defensive issues holding him back, he produced the worst wOBA of his career, .309, which amounted to -0.5 WAR, more than a full win worse than his previous worst season.

His bounceback attempt in 2010 didn’t go well either. In fact, it went much worse than 2009. Burrell produced a .283 wOBA, including a mere .131 ISO. After 24 games at DH, the Rays designated him for assignment, releasing him four days later. He’d end up somewhere for sure, probably a team like the White Sox that could have used a DH. Instead he signed a minor league contract with the Giants. It seemed like an odd pairing, a defensive statue like Burrell potentially playing for an NL team, but the Giants needed bats.

After just five games at Triple-A, the Giants recalled Burrell and slotted him into his familiar position, left field. The gamble paid off almost immediately. In 74 June PA, Burrell produced a .425 wOBA. He slowed down a bit in July, riding a .237 BABIP to a .273 wOBA, but the Giants offense covered for him, scoring 149 runs, by far their most in any month of 2010. In August he’s picked up the pace again, going 12-for-32 with five doubles and two homers. He has had a hand in 10 of the Giants’ 36 runs scored this month, so again his presence has helped the team avoid a prolonged slump.

Burrell’s recent hot streak, and really his season overall, calls into question the reasons why he failed so horribly in Tampa Bay. Does playing the field really affect his hitting ability? Does he simply know NL pitchers better, even though there are many pitchers he didn’t face during his time in the NL last decade? Was there something making him uncomfortable in Tampa Bay? In the AL? Like most issues of causation, there are likely myriad reasons why Burrell failed in 2009 and the first two months of 2010. He has apparently put that behind him, though, and is now playing a prominent role on a contending team. A year and a half later, Pat the Bat is realizing the perfect marriage he thought he had in 2009.

Bonus trivia: Did you know that Pat Burrell is the all-time leader in home runs for players born in Arkansas? The previous record holder: Brooks Robinson.

When all is said and done, I would be willing to bet that the rookie class of 2010 will go down as the best in the history of the game. The new wave of talent that has arrived in the show this year is off the charts. With Stephen Strasburg, Carlos Santana, and Buster Posey, we’ve seen three guys step right in and become premier players right away, and the depth of players behind those three is just nutty.

But rather than focusing on the class as a whole, I just wanted to look at the trio of underage guys who are making a big impact for their clubs. Jason Heyward, Mike Stanton, and Starlin Castro are all in their age 20 season (Heyward turned 21 a couple of days ago), and all performing well, which is a rare accomplishment.

In terms of performance in a year before age 21, this group (Heyward, Stanton, and Castro) is almost certainly the best in recent history. They have combined for +6.6 WAR, a staggeringly high total for three guys who can’t drink, especially considering two of them began the season in the minors. While guys like Alex Rodriguez had a great individual age 20 season, it’s rare to see three super young guys come into the league together and all play well.

In terms of talent, this is probably the best trio to arrive together since 1989, when Ken Griffey Jr, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa all hit the scene at the same time. Of those three, however, only Griffey was a good player that year- Sosa and Sheffield would develop into productive players later on in their careers.

The ultimate comparison, though, is the three guys who showed up together in 1951: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Chet Nichols. Okay, fine, the last name in the group doesn’t really belong with the first two, but he was a sensation in his rookie year, posting a league leading 2.88 ERA and finishing second (to Mays) in the Rookie of the Year voting.

We don’t know where the careers of Stanton, Heyward, and Castro will go from here, though given their talents, its easy to suspect that all three are in line for some great things going forward. Whether they can match the ultimate star power of the 1989 group is something we’ll only know in 20 years. What we can say, however, is that we probably won’t see a trio of underage guys this good break in together again any time soon.

Expanded Four Factors links:
Aaron Hill
Ryan Howard
Average Player
Math/Reference

Yesterday afternoon, I took a look at Aaron Hill and his abnormally low BABIP. Naturally, today we will be taking a look at Austin Jackson, who leads all qualified hitters with a .422 BABIP. That’s 29 points above the second highest BABIP, Josh Hamilton’s .393, and 123 points above the MLB average of .299.

As with Hill, Jackson’s profile does suggest that he should have an above average BABIP. He has a line drive rate of 25.8% and a ground ball rate above 50%, and both serve his speed quite well. As such, an above average BABIP should be expected.

But there are limits. First of all, Jackson’s high line drive rate is second in the league and ripe for some amount of regression to the mean. Second of all, Jackson’s BABIP on ground balls in particular is .333, and bound to come down. Jackson’s excellent 10.1% infield hit rate is about 4% above the league average, meaning that he accrues an extra 5.5 hits among his 148 ground balls, which only accounts for about 30 points of BABIP on grounders – that .333 GB BABIP is over 100 points above the league average rate, and can’t simply be explained by speed.

His BABIP on fly balls is also above the league average, by just under 70 points, and I don’t think the abnormality on fly ball BABIP can be explained as simply as his speed. Simply put, Jackson’s BABIP is going to come down. He has a .342 wOBA this season, which, after taking out the SB/CS component (16 SB, 4 CS), comes closer to his Four Factors-projected .335 wOBA. Right now, Jackson is below average in the other three non-BABIP components, with a 6.2% BB%, a 26.1% K% (K/PA), and a .334 POWH (XB/H) to go along with that .422 BABIP. Let’s take a look at what happens when that BABIP starts moving down toward the mean.

To account for the fact that Jackson is 23 and could easily improve, I have included a forecast for a 4% decrease in K% (in blue), along with a forecast for the same K% as this season (red). In the optimistic projection, a drop to a more realistic .350 BABIP (think Ichiro level) has Jackson as a .300 wOBA player – as well as Aaron Hill has hit with his .199 BABIP. In the pessimistic projection, that same drop would make Jackson a .287 wOBA player – think Carlos Gomez. In fact, given both players’ fantastic defensive abilities, they make decent comps. The depressing part here is that any BABIP below .380 – something I think is a mortal lock for the future – leaves Jackson as a below average hitter in either scenario, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Even if Jackson isn’t a terrific, or average, or even competent hitter, he has fantastic defense in center field to fall back on, which could easily make him a league average player. His minor league numbers don’t particularly suggest an incoming increase in contact skills, walk rates, or power, however, so Tigers fans will likely have to be content with a light hitting, slick fielding center fielder under team control for a long time. And really, that’s not so bad.