What's Really Behind the Twins BABIP?

Figured I’d either find evidence to support or disprove his assertion. And found a very large BABIP on the fly ball side.

Another great read. I heard you were going to the O’s game with dragon last week but it didn’t work out. Maybe next year?

And according to Fangraphs:

Delmon Young: +16.8 runs batting, -2.8 runs fielding = +14.0 runs above average
Michael Cuddyer: +5.8 runs batting, -9.8 runs fielding = -4.0 RAA
Jason Kubel: +4.4 runs batting, -5.7 runs fielding = -1.3 RAA

Basically, this year, Cuddyer and Kubel aren’t quite hitting well enough to provide above average value. There’s a little value above replacement, +0.6 and +0.5 WAR respectively, but not much at this point.

I’m (still) working on an apples to apples incorporation of fielding and pitching runs into my TRA software, but I’m still working through issues with the MLB batted ball data, specifically location where the ball is fielded versus where it is actually hit.

depending on what we got in return.

On the offensive side, I agree he’s probably our best trade bait. Someone like the Chicago Cubs, who have been looking for a long time at getting a left handed power bat, would love Kubel. Especially in the smaller Wrigley Field outfield to hid his lack of range. Not sure what I’d look for in return though.

Next year, I would love to see us get an excellent Franklin Gutierrez like defender who can give around average, maybe a little below average offensive production. Perhaps play him in RF or move Span, but upgrade the defense a lot, which would help Baker and Slowey especially. And as you note, Cuddyer at DH a portion of the time, maybe Mauer the rest of the time to keep him fresh. Lots of options.

Jason Kubel is one of my favorite players, but part of that is my admiration for how he fought back from his horrible blown knee. Unfortunately, the team can’t afford to have two guys playing the corner positions that have such limited range. I would have to add that Cuddyer doesn’t seem to be covering much ground these days, either, but makes up for it with great anticipation and his rocket arm. Fact is, the Twins remain a defense-oriented team with pitchers that need great defense to win.

The one really good thing about having Gomez in CF last year was that, with Span playing right and Young in LF, we actually had pretty good coverage. Imagine what that outfield could do this year, after Delmon dropped 30 pounds.

Now imagine what the outfield would look like with Repko in CF, Span in RF and the faster Delmon in LF. That outfield would catch a lot of fly balls compared to what they’ve been using lately. Repko isn’t quite as fast as Span, but he covers a lot of ground, takes good lines to the ball and has a significantly stronger arm. I think Span actually plays better on the corners than he does in CF, where his below average arm lets too many runners take an extra base.

In addition to determining overall BABIP for a team’s pitchers and hitters by batted ball type, I also broke it out by ballpark. Just didn’t consider it for my analysis…

For Target Field, BABIP on GB and FB are .226 (16th) and .266 (30th) respectively. The fly ball BABIP is far and away the highest in baseball, and it’s not even close. Fenway Park is second highest and it sits at .230. Obviously, the Twins defense and offense play a role here. I’ve already been through the Twins defensive numbers (.220 overall on fly balls, 29th), and offensively the Twins also have the highest fly ball BABIP in the Majors, at .223.

So it definitely appears Target Field is a fly ball BABIP nightmare (or dream for hitters) across the board. Not sure why, though. Perhaps the fact it plays as a poor home run park means more long doubles?

as much as batted ball rates can be predictive. LD versus GB versus FB is definitely a skill, and I suspect inducing pop flies is as well, since they’re effectively the reverse of a weak ground ball.

But other than line drives and pop flies, until HitFx comes along and tracks batted ball trajectory and speed, it’s not possible for me to tell whether a ground ball or fly ball is “well hit”. Although I am working on separating all fly balls into “shallow” (in front of the fielders) and “deep”, as I suspect for fly balls there are very different BABIP rates.

and I’m open to suggestions. Funny note from Sunday’s game in Baltimore. We had tickets four rows directly behind the Twins dugout. Was a great time, mostly Twins fans there, across the stadium in fact. Eventually, many of the fans started calling Jim Thome “T-Home”. And he looked angry…probably because he just struck out.

If I had a steak I would have given it to him.

and Wrigley Field is around the middle of the pack, 17th in the league in FB BABIP at .164. I would have expected it to be lower given the smaller dimensions.

Adam: What’s the criterion for line drives vs. fly balls? Is it trajectory? Is it the speed of the hit? Some combination?

Regardless of the criterion, if we apply one uniform standard to all pitchers, it’s a fair way to analyze them—a lot more fair than any other metric.

are definitely part of Gameday’s data. No subscription needed, you can open up any gameday from MLB’s site.

Delmon Young’s double off the top of the fence was considered a fly ball.
Billy Butler’s smash was also considered a fly ball.

But Mauer’s single in the first inning was considered a (soft) line drive.

I wonder if we might consider using Repko more down the stretch to keep Span’s legs fresh and improve overall defensive play out there.

Even better, be more aggressive about sitting Kubel and/or Thome with lefties on the mound and start Repko in right (or center, if he’s better than Span; I don’t really know). When Morneau comes back, Cuddyer could DH.

While he’s not Gomez, he’s rated around average based on most of what I’ve seen this year.

And as far as second guessing is concerned, yes we gave up outfield defense in Gomez, but we gained one helluva defensive shortstop.

that was quite the brutal outfield last night for the Royals. Yeesh. Kind of like a Delmon-Cuddyer-Kubel outfield from last year…except they’re all at least outfielders, unlike Gordon.

I didn’t watch the game live, but watching the replays I was amazed at how soft the Twins’ extra-base hits were. Had I not known before starting the videos to expect base hits, I’d have assumed that most of those were going to be caught.

and I agree, the OF defense is probably not 30% worse than league average. I think Target Field is a primary culprit, whether it’s the ballpark itself or bias on MLB’s “Gameday Guy/Gal” who determines FB versus LD, etc. The fact that Twins hitters have a similarly high FB BABIP is too much of a coincidence IMO.

League average for me is .292 while it is about .302 on Fangraphs. This is probably because Fangraphs has a funky formula for pitchers based on innings pitched that accounts for outs on the base paths.

For pitchers I use (H-HR)/(IP*2.82+H-SO-HR).
It has like a .97 r^2 for pitchers over 50 innings pitched, so it’s going to be extremely similar. I think there’s been more TBF data added for historical data recently, maybe it’s time start calculating it the same as we would for batters.

My calculation simply uses batted ball data rather than innings pitched, total number of bunts vs bunts for hits, same with line drives, etc.