It’s not often that a team most observers expected to finish fourth or fifth finds itself leading its division at the end of April. So it’s only natural that writers, analysts, and fans have been wondering if the Cleveland Indians’ (13-8) hot start is merely the result of luck.
Fortunately, the sabermetric revolution has given us insights about how to quantify the unquantifiable and isolate players’ performances from the things over which they have little control. Chief among them is batting average on balls in play, also known as “BABIP” or “hit rate.”
BABIP is exactly what it sounds like: the proportion of balls hit inside the confines of the diamond that result in the batter reaching base. Almost every hitter’s BABIP ends up around .300. Some batters’ natural hit rates vary from this mean—power hitters who make good contact and speedy guys who can run out infield hits tend to do better than slow-footed flyball hitters—but most fluctuations are due to random chance, especially in a sample size as small as the season to date.
Using The Hardball Times’ fantastically amazing xBABIP calculator, we can get an estimate of what players’ hit rates would be in a luck-neutral environment. By plugging his expected hit rate in for his actual BABIP, we can get an idea of how a player would do in a completely neutral context.
Using their xBABIPs and Power Factors, I calculated luck-neutral slashlines for each of the eight Indians players with more than 50 plate appearances. Here are the results, sorted by the difference between their expected and actual OPSes: (click for bigger view)
Starting at the top—wow, Santana and Choo have gotten unlucky. OPS isn’t the best measurement of offensive talent, but 159 points was more than the difference between Albert Pujols and BIlly Butler last year. Both players’ adjusted numbers are somewhat underwhelming given what was expected of them, but even if Santana is having trouble getting line drives and Choo can’t rediscover his storied plate discipline, we should expect dramatic improvements from both of them based solely on luck averaging out.
The other three really unlucky names are interesting; had I not actually looked the numbers up, I would have guessed all three would show up on the other side. It seems like Orlando Cabrera has been coming through with big hits a disproportionate amount of the time. Hannahan hasn’t hit nearly this well since his 41-game stint with the Athletics in 2007, and Asdrubal Cabrera has shown uncharacteristic power. But all three are actually getting ripped off by the luck dragon.
LaPorta and Brantley don’t change much—the former might get two more hits than he’s on pace for, while the latter might end up with three fewer bases knocked than he’s now expecting. But Hafner is due for a dramatic dropoff. I don’t care how hard he’s hitting the ball, a .417 BABIP isn’t going to fly. A .790 OPS ain’t bad, but it would be his worst since 2008. Perhaps it’s a bit premature to call this a real resurgence for Pronk.
Such a drastic decline from the Tribe’s best hitter to date would be a big blow to the team, but overall the Indians will be fine once their luck evens out—Hafner’s projected slippage would be more than made up for by the big rebounds from Santana, Choo, and A. Cabrera.
In fact, Indians hitters as a whole have been quite unlucky. The Tribe’s .303 team BABIP may seem a bit high, but not when you consider that Cleveland has a composite xBABIP of .322. Right now, the team is hitting .263/.334/.408. Plug in the xBABIP and that jumps to .274/.345/.425—a 28-point jump in OPS. That’s the difference between a team of Corey Harts and a team of Adam Dunns.
Of course, these numbers are all based on a very small sample size—the luck of what happens to the balls once they’re hit is accounted for, but three weeks isn’t enough to be fully confident about things like power, plate discipline, and types of contact—and this doesn’t mean anything for the pitching staff (3.69 ERA, 4.20 xFIP). But if anything, Indians hitters have actually been underperforming. Even if this whole first place thing doesn’t last much longer, Cleveland’s offense looks like it’s for real.
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