David Wright and Daniel Murphy – Luck or Ability?

We’ve noted recently how David Wright continues to lead the league in BABIP at .418, well above his career mark of .350.  Its interesting to note this difference despite the following breakdown of his batted balls from the past two seasons:

	AVG	BABIP	Line Drive %	Fly Ball %	Ground Ball %
2008	.302	.328	25.6%	38.2%	36.2%
2009	.316	.418	25.1%	36.9%	38.0%

So, despite hitting the same distribution of line drives, grounders, and fly balls, Wright is seeing a lot more balls fall in this season, which (again) suggests that his solid batting average this season is being driven by good luck while his actual performance is rating much worse than 2008 (especially when his complete loss of home run power is factored in).

What Wright is doing is interesting when compared to Daniel Murphy. Lets look at the same chart for Murphy:

	AVG	BABIP	Line Drive %	Fly Ball %	Ground Ball %
2008	.313	.386	33.3%	25.5%	41.2%
2009	.241	.265	18.5%	41.6%	39.9%

In Murphy’s case we’ve seen his BABIP fall quite a bit from ‘08 to ‘09, but we also see that he’s hitting far fewer line drives and more fly balls.

This article suggests that, in general, 79% of flyballs are caught for outs, compared to only 26% of line drives. 

So the difference with Murphy is more than just the seemingly random chance that has caused variations in David Wright’s performance.  With Murphy, he just doesn’t seem to be making the same quality of contact as he did in 2008.  Murphy had around 150 plate appearances in ‘08 and around another 300 in ‘09, so small sample sizes may still be at play, but we really haven’t seen Murphy recreate anything like his hot streak in 2008 so far this season. 

And unfortunately, this 2009 Daniel Murphy is simply not an adequate Major League starter.  His line (.308 OBP, .352 SLG, .660 OPS) is vaguely similar to the following:

• Elvis Andrus’ 2009 season (.315/.346/.661)
• Manny Trillo’s Career (.316/.345/.661)
• Luis Lopez’ 1997 season for the Mets (.317/.341/.658)

I’m pretty sure that the Mets don’t want the equivalent of Manny Trillo or 1997 Luis Lopez manning first base for them going forward – Daniel Murphy needs to step it up.

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Is Tony Bernazard a Vampire?

On the left is Mets’ Vice President Tony Bernazard circa 1987. On the right is (allegedly) the same person in 2009.  Why isn’t this man aging?  Is he the devil? Is he like Brad Pitt in that movie?  My money is on vampirism. 

If I was Jose Coronado (or Francisco Rodriguez or Billy Wagner or that Director of Baseball Operations guy) and this lunatic was staring me down, possibly shirtless, and threatening to beat me up, I think I’d be afraid.  That’s all for now.

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A Couple of Notes about BABIP

For the uninitiated, a pitchers’ BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is thought to be almost entirely dependent on luck.  On the other hand, a good hitter will often register a better BABIP than, say, a Rey Ordonez.  However, over short periods, an individual player’s trend or change in BABIP can often be attributed to luck (i.e. batted balls are falling in for hits).

With that in mind, I’m not sure that anyone should be too excited about Jeff Francoeur’s first week with the Mets (stat line: 7 games, .345 AVG, 1HR, 7RBIs). 

First off, we’re still waiting for Francoeur’s first walk in a Met  uniform. In fact, he’s yet to reach a 3-0 or 3-1 count.  Also, his BABIP is .360 as a Met compared to .300 in his career.  So, over a week, he’s had a couple of extra balls fall in that he usually does buffing up that batting average.  To his credit though, Francoeur is swinging at fewer first pitches as a Met (42% compared to 48% in his career) and is he seeing more pitches per at bat (3.86 vs. 3.40 in his career).  So maybe he and Hojo are on to something, although at some point he’s going have to draw a walk.

On the topic of BABIP – its also worth noting that David Wright continues to lead the NL in BABIP at .419, well higher than his .345 career mark.  As we’ve pointed out before, Wrights high BABIP (and his resulting high batting average) is compensating somewhat for his lack of power in 2009.

Just for fun though, let’s imagine that Wright was doing everything the same this season except that he was hitting to a .345 BABIP instead of .419 (i.e. if he wasn’t hitting into what is probably good luck). 

If we take away enough hits to make his BABIP .345 this season, Wright would have 86 hits instead of 104.  His batting average would be .250.

We’d all be pretty worried.  And if Wrights luck changes and he doesn’t find his power stroke, he’s going to be a very unproductive baseball player.

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Why Baseball is Different From Golf

With Tom Watson in contention late in the final round of golf’s British Open at the age of 59, I was trying to come up with what the baseball analogy to what Watson accomplished would be.

Well the most notable Major Leaguer born during the same week as Tom Watson back in early September of 1948 is outfielder Gary Maddox. Maddox was once traded for former Met Willie Montanez and he retired in 1986, 23 years ago.

So I guess what Tom Watson is doing is roughly analogous to Gary Maddox leaving his post on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia, returning to Major League baseball and leading the league in hitting, which would be a highly unusual event.

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