2010 Rockies xBABIP Adjustments

by hjrrockies on Feb 21, 2011 12:29 PM MST

In 2010, the Rockies hitting was marked by two major problems: the dramatic split between home and road performances (The Rockies home wRC+ of 122 was second in MLB, and their road wRC+ of 68 was dead last), and the lack of good or even adequate performances by Todd Helton, Ian Stewart, Dexter Fowler, Seth Smith, Eric Young Jr., and most notably Chris Iannetta. Up to this point, many fans have chalked up last year's disappointment to a combination of age and busts. However, I think something more Luck-Dragon oriented was the root cause of 2010: BABIP.

BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls in Play. It is simply a measurement of the amount of a hitter's balls in play that land for hits. It is very useful for determining how "lucky" a hitter (or pitcher) was over a sample of plate appearances. If you want to know more about BABIP, I would read this Fangraphs Sabermetrics Library article by Steve Slowinski.

xBABIP stands for eXpected Batting Average on Balls in Play. It is a metric that attempts to determine what a particular hitter's BABIP should be over a sample of plate appearances. It takes into account the batted-ball type percentages ("batted-ball profile") of a hitter, factors in their speed (essentially ability to leg out infield singles), and produces an estimation of what one would expect for a hitter's BABIP. This allows us to somewhat factor out luck for hitters, and adjust their batting lines to reflect what we would normally expect to happen.

With inspiration from this Hardball Times piece by Jeffery Gross, and with the use of Chris Dutton's "Simple xBABIP Calculator", I created a spreadsheet to adjust the batting lines of the returning cast members from 2010:

2010 Rockies xBABIP Adjustments

I found the results quite surprising. Every single one of 2010's "disappointments" experienced some amount of "bad luck." Our two biggest busts, Chris Iannetta and Seth Smith, had their lines incredibly depressed because of BABIP-misfortunes. They experienced a 20% and 11% reduction in OPS, respectively.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the 2011 Rockies look to improve internally rather than with outside talent. Looking at the xBABIP data, the team may not even need to improve, they just need to experience some well-deserved BABIP normalization.

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).

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Wow

Look at those expected OPS’s of .841 for Iannetta and .873 for Smith. That would be so sweet if we could get those next season.

38 more days until the Rockies Home Opener!!!!!!!

by RhodeIslandRoxfan on Feb 22, 2011 9:20 AM MST reply actions

Yea, I just hope that Iannetta's profile fits within the accurate range of the model.

His LD% was down to ~13% last year, so there were definite problems with his swing, compared to 2008 at least (~22% LD%). He hit enough groundballs to boost the xBABIP compared to his previous rates, but if he is going to regain his power potential (probably around ~.230 ISO), he needs to loose the groundballs in favor of LD’s and crushed FB’s.

Rocktober is not a time of year, it is a religion.

by hjrrockies on Feb 22, 2011 5:29 PM MST up reply actions