Projo Fantasy Sports Blog

By Michael Salfino

Let's continue our season-ending series on who our stats consider to be lucky and unlucky players by focusing today on jinxed hitters.

To isolate luck, we look at average with runners in scoring position (RISP) because, generally, hitters' success or failure here does not repeat year to year to the same degree as broader stats like batting average. We also isolate the percentage of homers on fly balls for hitters who should still be in their power prime. And we assess a hitter's batting average on balls in play, which generally is about .300. Note, though, that balls in play (BIP) do not include homers (by definition, out of play) and that line-drive rate is a good check for outlying numbers as about 75 percent of line drives are hits.

First though, as a test of our underlying assumptions, let's look at the players we labeled as unlucky at this time last year.

Assuming they received a similar degree of opportunity - and they all did - more of them should have performed better than worse. For context, consider that a significant majority of players should be expected to perform worse than last year - not the 50 percent of players we'd expect. The reasons for this are regression to the mean (average performance for each player as well as average performance for all players), the fact that many poor performers lose their jobs and thus don't get a chance to improve and the number of first-year players with no stat history replacing them.

Here are the unlucky hitters and pitchers we highlighted last year and expected to perform significantly better in 2008: Akinori Iwamura (Rays), J.D. Drew (Red Sox), Paul Konerko (White Sox), Stephen Drew (Diamondbacks), Wandy Rodriguez (Astros), Andy Sonnanstine (Rays), Dan Wheeler (Rays) and Jason Frasor (Blue Jays).

Iwamura was cited for his poor average with RISP (.184). This year, he improved, but only to .243. So his runs batted in increased 30 percent, but not as much as expected. His other stats held remarkably steady. Let's be tough self-graders and call Iwamura a push.

J.D. Drew was expected to increase his rate of homers on fly balls - just 8 percent last year. That rate more than doubled in '08 to over 17 percent. Alas, Drew missed significant time again due to injury. But his OPS improved from .796 to .930, so Drew is a hit.

Konerko is a big swing and a miss. Enough said.

But Stephen Drew is another big hit: average jumping from .238 to .282 for the exact reason cited here last year: a huge increase in his BIP average (.267 to .312).

On the pitching side, Rodriguez, Wheeler and Sonnanstine each repeated their solid K/BB ratios and translated them much better into ERA. They're all big hits. But Frasor is a whiff, though he interestingly has a better ERA than last year despite a far worse K/BB ratio.

Five hits and two misses is a nice result and shows we're on the right path with our analysis. Let's try to do even better now in looking only at unlucky hitters, focusing mainly on a stat courtesy of our friends at HardballTimes.com and Baseball Info Solutions: predicted OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage).

Nick Swisher, 1B/OF, White Sox: His predicted OPS, which looks at BIP and where they're hit, is .882. His actual is a relatively puny .749, making him the unluckiest predicted OPS hitter in the sport. Use that .882 as the baseline for 2009 projections.

Carlos Delgado, 1B, Mets: He's been so hot since June that people are talking about him as an MVP. But it's just his luck that turned. For the full season, his predicted OPS is .965, so this potential free agent seems far from done at age 36.

Mark Ellis, 2B, A's: His defense will keep him in the lineup next year, somewhere. The A's or any potential suitors must look at the .798 OPS he should have, not his .694 actual.

Jack Cust, DH, A's: He has tremendous power: homers on about 30 percent of fly balls two years in a row (average is 10 percent). His .828 actual OPS isn't bad, but look at his predicted one, a sweet .957.

Jeff Francoeur, OF, Braves: Very confident in this play as his average with RISP was .194. If he's got some kind of "gut" defect, why was it .284 and .337 the prior two years?

B.J. Upton, OF, Rays: He's a wonderful defensive center fielder. So he doesn't even need to flash the power he showed in 2007. But the rate of homers on fly balls went from 19.8 percent to 6.8 percent. Those seem like end points on his spectrum. Expect him to settle somewhere in the middle at about 13 percent, which would have translated into 16 homers this year given the number of fly balls he hit.

 Tags  B.J. Upton baseball Baseball by the Numbers Carlos Delgado Jack Cust Jeff Francoeur Mark Ellis Michael Salfino Nick Swisher

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