Upton And The Long Ball

by
October 14, 2008

During the season, one of the questions that no one had a really good answer to was “what happened to B.J. Upton’s power? After hitting 24 home runs in 474 at-bats as a 22-year-old, he regressed to just 9 home runs in 531 at-bats this year. His HR/FB% went from 19.8% in 2007 to 7.4% in 2008. For comparison, his 2007 HR/FB rate was about equal to what Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton had this year, while his 2008 HR/FB rate was about equal to what Dustin Pedroia and Shane Victorino had this year.

If Hamilton suddenly had Victorino’s power, everyone would notice. That’s basically what Upton went through this year, and while he was still a useful player thanks to his walks and stolen bases, the home runs had basically dried up with no real explanation.

Well, worry not, because Upton’s apparently out to prove that the power is still there, launching his 5th home run of the postseason last night in Tampa’s route of the Red Sox. That’s five longballs in just 31 at-bats, by the way. Those five home runs tell us, with almost absolute certainty, that his 2008 regular season home run rate was not his real talent level.

If Upton’s true talent HR level was a rate of one home run per 59 at-bats, as it was in the regular season, then the odds of him hitting five home runs in 31 at-bats would be .0001, one in ten thousand.

When you combine what we know about his performances prior to 2008 with his postseason performance so far, we can just shrug our shoulders at his power outage during the regular season and assume it was just a fluke, because there’s no reason to worry about Upton’s lack of power.

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Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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Bill B.
17 years ago

“Those five home runs tell us, with almost absolute certainty, that his 2008 regular season home run rate was not his real talent level.”

I don’t disagree with your conclusion, but I’m not sure that the small sample size of six post-season games is enough to support the claim. Players go on hot and cold streaks all the time. Not to discredit Upton’s great performance, of course.

Isn’t the average HR/FB somewhere around 12%? Obviously, 19.8% then would be too high and 7.4% too low. He’s probably not as good a HR hitter as he showed last season but not as bad as he showed in the ’08 regular season.

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