FanGraphs Baseball | Page 1367 | Daily baseball statistical analysis and commentary

Jon Jay Is a Whole Thing

June 26, 2018

This post begins with a very crude and also lame test of the reader’s observational powers. What’s necessary to know before beginning the test is that FanGraphs’ player linker features an option that allows one to link players just once. If a player’s full name appears on multiple occasions in a document, only the first of those appearances will feature a link to the relevant player’s profile. Subsequent instances of the player’s full name are presented just in plain text.

These finer points of the player linker’s functionality having been reviewed, I will now move on and present a set of three tables. Each table features the top-10 hitters by BABIP over the last three seasons — in the first two cases, among the batters with 350 or more plate appearances and, in the third case, among this year’s qualified hitters (because a relatively small population has hit the 350 mark).

Here they follow with little comment. First, for 2016:

Top-10 Hitters by BABIP, 2016

	Name	Team	PA	BABIP
1	Tyler Naquin	Indians	365	.411
2	DJ LeMahieu	Rockies	635	.388
3	Cameron Maybin	Tigers	391	.383
4	Starling Marte	Pirates	529	.380
5	Paulo Orlando	Royals	484	.380
6	J.D. Martinez	Tigers	517	.378
7	Tim Anderson	White Sox	431	.375
8	Jonathan Villar	Brewers	679	.373
9	David Freese	Pirates	492	.372
10	Mike Trout	Angels	681	.371
11	Jon Jay	Padres	373	.371

Min. 350 PA

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Colin Moran on How He Turned a Corner

by David Laurila

June 26, 2018

Colin Moran was at a crossroads. The 2016 season was over, and the left-handed-hitting third baseman had just slashed .259/.329/.378, with 10 home runs and 124 strikeouts, in Triple-A. His pair of big-league cameos had been every bit as abysmal — in 25 plate appearances for the Houston Astros, he logged three base hits and one free pass. Truth be told, the sixth-overall pick in the 2013 draft had essentially gone from prospect to suspect due to his lack of production.

Moran recognized that fact. Moreso, he did something about it. As Tony Kemp, his former teammate, related to me last fall, Moran came to the conclusion that his “swing doesn’t play in the big leagues,” and told his hitting coordinator, “I need to switch something.”

He did just that, and the results speak for themselves. Moran returned to Triple-A in 2017 and slashed an eye-opening .301/.369/542, with 18 home runs in only 350 at-bats. (A facial fracture, courtesy of a foul ball, knocked him out of action for six weeks.) His turnaround season included seven games with the eventual World Series champs, for whom he went 4-for-11 and hit first MLB long ball.

The 25-year-old University of North Carolina product is now a Pittsburgh Pirate, having been traded from Houston to the Steel City this past January in the five-player Gerrit Cole deal. In 248 plate appearances for his new club, Moran is hitting .265/.347/.419 with seven home runs. He shared the story of his career-altering adjustments prior to a recent game at PNC Park.

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Colin Moran: “In a perfect world, I would have made the changes earlier. That’s something I think about a lot. It often takes a bad year to get to, ‘Alright, let’s change some stuff, let’s figure out what works,’ and unfortunately that’s what happened with me. It’s preferable to think forward rather than wait for that bad year.

“My swing was off when I got called up in 2016. Things didn’t feel all that great with it — I didn’t know why — and I got exposed, especially at the top of the zone. I remember my first at-bat. You kind of know in the batter’s box when guys are attacking a weakness, and the first few pitches were up and in. It was like, ‘Man.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Lester’s High-Wire Act

by Jay Jaffe

June 26, 2018

On Tuesday, for the second time inside of a week, two of the NL’s top starting pitchers in terms of ERA — the Cubs’ Jon Lester (2.10, third in the league) and the Dodgers’ Ross Stripling (1.99, which would rank second if he weren’t 4.2 innings short of qualifying) — will square off, this time in Los Angeles. On June 20, Lester got the upper hand, throwing seven shutout innings in a 4-0 win, the latest strong outing for the 34-year-old southpaw, who’s been on quite a roll lately.

Indeed, Lester has surrendered a mere two runs and 13 hits in his last four starts (27 innings), both via solo homers by Cardinals in a June 15 game that the Cubs won, 13-5. Only once in his past 10 starts has he allowed more than two runs (four in six innings versus the Pirates in a May 29 win), good for a 1.58 ERA over 62.2 innings. Depending upon the schedules of Max Scherzer (10-3, 2.09 ERA) and Jacob deGrom (5-3, 1.69 ERA) as well as the preferences of their respective teams, it’s not completely farfetched that NL All-Star manager Dave Roberts could give Lester (who’s a gaudy 9-2 to go with that ERA) the start on July 17 at Nationals Park, though you can imagine the pressure will be on the Nationals to make Scherzer available, health permitting.

Despite those superficially glossy stats, Lester is nowhere near the top of the NL pitching WAR leaderboard. His 0.9 WAR ranks just 26th in the NL, somehow behind the WARs of the likes of the Marlins’ Jose Urena (2-9, 4.40 ERA, 1.4 WAR), the Phillies’ Vince Velasquez (5-8, 4.69 ERA, 1.4 WAR), and the Mets’ Zack Wheeler (2-6, 4.85 ERA, 1.2 WAR), none of whom are likely to make the NL All-Star team, let alone get consideration for the start.

The disconnect for Lester is that his FIP (4.19) is almost exactly double his ERA, ranking 28th among the 43 pitchers with enough innings to qualify and 37th out of 59 with at least 60 innings; his 104 FIP- tells us that he’s actually 4% worse than league average on that front. The 2.09 runs per nine differential between his ERA and FIP isn’t just the majors’ largest this season, it’s the largest from an ERA qualifier since 1901. Even if you drop the innings threshold to 90 (Lester’s total), he’s just a whisker away from the lead:

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Kiley McDaniel Chat – 6/26/18

by Kiley McDaniel

June 26, 2018