Hanley’s “Down Year”
For most major league shortstops, a .285/.366/.443 batting line and a .355 wOBA would be cause for celebration. Hanley Ramirez isn’t like most shortstops, however. The 26-year old Marlins star posted a combined .397 wOBA over the 2006-2009 seasons, easily topping the .400 wOBA mark in each of the past three years. Prior to 2010, ZiPS projected Hanley for a .408 wOBA, and CHONE called for a .412 wOBA.
Why is Ramirez merely hitting very well as opposed to ranking among the absolute best batters in the big leagues? One reason is a lower-than-usual batting average on balls in play — Hanley’s BABIP is .307 this season. His career BABIP is .345, and both ZiPS (.355 pre-season BABIP) and CHONE (.357) predicted 35-36% of his balls put in play would evade fielders. According to this expected BABIP (xBABIP) calculator from The Hardball Times, Ramirez’s BABIP should be closer to .333.
So, Ramirez has been unlucky to an extent. But that’s not to say that everything else is business as usual. His power production is down:
Hanley’s Isolated Power is .158. His career average is .207, and ZiPS (.217 pre-season ISO) and CHONE (.221) expected him to easily surpass the .200 mark. On a related note, Ramirez’s ground ball rate has spiked:
He’s hitting grounders 54.5% of the time in 2010. By contrast, Ramirez’s GB% was 43.8 in 2006, 40.1 in 2007, 45.8 in 2008 and 38.6 last season.
Using Pitch F/X data from Joe Lefkowitz’s site, I broke down Hanley’s batted ball distribution by pitch type over the 2008-2010 seasons (the years for which we have a lot of Pitch F/X data). I also included Ramirez’s slugging percentage on contact (SLG CON) by pitch type. To provide context, you’ll also find the major league averages by pitch type, provided by THT’s Harry Pavlidis.
(Note: the fastball averages include both four-seam and two-seam fastballs.)
Hanley’s hitting more ground balls on fastballs, sliders, curveballs and changeups. He’s still killing fastballs when he makes fair contact, but not to the same extent as in 2008 and 2009. The sample size isn’t huge on curveballs and changeups, but he hasn’t done much of anything with those pitches this season — check out those SLG CON totals in 2010 compared to the two previous seasons.
I don’t think there’s any reason to think that his power output will remain this mild — with 432 plate appearances, Ramirez is short of the point at which ISO becomes statistically reliable (550 PA). It’s entirely possible that he goes on an extra-base hit binge from here on out. ZiPS projects a .190 ISO for the rest of the season. That, along with a BABIP bounce back (.335 projected), gives Ramirez a .391 rest-of-season wOBA. The fact that people are asking, “what’s wrong with this guy?” when he has the second-best wOBA among qualified shortstops tells you just how special a talent Hanley Ramirez is.
A recent graduate of Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Fangraphs, The Pittsburgh Sports Report and Baseball Analytics. His work for Inside Edge Scouting Services has appeared on ESPN.com and Yahoo.com, and he was a fantasy baseball columnist for Rotoworld from 2009-2010. He recently contributed an article on Mike Stanton's slugging to The Hardball Times Annual 2012. Contact David at david.golebiewski@gmail.com and check out his work at Journalist For Hire.
This is a good piece for the “are splits meaningful?” discussion.
If Hanley stops hitting so many grounders, his numbers will improve. Wouldn’t that make the split more than just randomness? He will have been genuinely better in the second half than the first half.
Or is the argument only against using previous years splits to predict future splits?
Another interesting stat would be the number, not just %, of each pitch hit.
For example, 60% GB on curves could be for 12 curves out of 20, or 60 out of 100.
The case could be that either pitchers are throwing him more offspeed (don’t let him hurt you with fastballs), he’s not being as patient, his pitch recognition is not as good as usual, or any combination of things.
The increased grounballs often signifies a timing issue, where the batter is “ahead” or “in front” of everything and manifests mechanically as “rolling over” or rotating the top hand too soon. It could be something he is doing, or something pitchers are doing, most likely both.
Jeff Baker was on an ESPN radio show recently and stated that HR is the type of guy that could just go crazy for a month and bring all his numbers up to his career average. I don’t know if that is the case or not.
My bet is that scouting has noted something, and HR has yet to adjust.
It would be very interesting to have a full compilation on him to see (1) pitch type, (2) location, (3) count, (4) result and see just what is going on. He’s getting ready to enter his “prime years” and the possibilities of what he could do are both impressive and possibly historic.
He’s also hitting .202 against lefties this year. His L/R splits for the past couple of years are as follows. Can anyone make any sense of this?
2006: .307/.288
2007: .399/.312
2008: .258/.313
2009: .316/.352
2010: .202/.307
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