Taking a Look at whether Eric Byrnes is a “lemon” His owners can only say WOW at this point; what a first half of a season! In an earlier post I discussed the trading of “lemons” for “cherries.” One type of lemon is a guy who is far outperforming his typical standards. So, is Eric Byrnes a “lemon?” As you may know from my prior posts, Byrnes’ owner has been shopping him all around the league, and has just posted another trade for him (the prior one discussed in the post about Failing To Have a Plan was successfully countered.)

His stats to date are tremendous; 12 HR 42 RBI 14 SB .313/.360/.510. He is in the Top Ten on playertrack.com (see Rob Reed’s BaseballGeeks site). Clearly this is an outstanding performance. But it is not one that is likely to continue, at least in the “slash” stats.

According to The Hardball Times, his BABIP is a lusty .343, the norm is .300. Career wise, his hit rates and contact rates are as follows:

2003: 29% Hit Rate 81% Contact Rate
2004: 32%-83%
2005: 25%-82%
2006: 28%-78%

One could opine that since he was unlucky the last two years, he is merely seeing a correction this year. It is possible. However, 34% is a bit high for a correction. Nevertheless, if supported by his peripherals it could be sustainable.

His 2007 skill set: 84% contact rate, 34% hit rate, 0.46 K/BB ratio. Curiously, his GB/LC/FB splits are those to be seen from a true power hitter: 34% GB 20% LD and 46% FB. In fact, Ryan Howard has the EXACT same splits so far in 2007. Byrnes has an xBA of only .274 however. The xBA metric does take into account a players splits; it measures, in part, the chances that a ball falls in for a hit, and a prime factor in this is how many line drives a player hits and how far he hits the ball when he puts it in play. You can subscribe to BaseballHQ or buy their book if you want to do more research on this (BaseballHQ can thank me later for the plug).

So, it appears to me that at least in the BA department Byrnes should see a big drop off. Byrnes is 32 years old and has never hit higher than .283 in 7 full time seasons, so his history lends further support for a drop in his BA. His power and speed are basically in line with his past history; he has always had above average power and last year joined the 25-25 club with a .267 BA.

Given his track record, he appears to have the same power skills and speed skills that he has shown in the past; he is just hitting 40 points higher than he should be. What odds can I get that it will continue??