Today is the 2nd edition of the leaders and laggards series focusing on Hitter BABIP. As I mentioned in my first article, hitter BABIP is different than pitcher BABIP because hitters have more control over this metric and usually establish their own level in which they should be expected to regress toward. With that reminder out of the way, let’s take a look at the top 10 lists…

 
Not much commentary really necessary, as obviously none of these players can maintain these astronomical BABIPs, and will therefore not be finishing the year with an average anywhere close to what they are currently putting up.

The problem with using career BABIPs to calculate an xAVG is illustrated perfectly with Geovany Soto. He’s only had 80 major league ABs before this year, and 54 of those came with a .486 BABIP, which is inflating that career BABIP. If I lower his career BABIP to a still high .330, his xAVG falls all the way to .268, which is more in line with most projections. Looking at his batted ball profile, it seems like the explanation for his high BABIP right now is the 28% line drive rate, which is probably not sustainable. Soto was a hot sleeper pick this pre-season, with many experts debating exactly what can be expected given his minor league track record and out-of-nowhere monster 2007 season. Patrick DiCaprio, though, was pessimistic on Soto this year, even typing up his thoughts here. Personally, I was in the middle of the road, projecting .260-.270 with 15 HRs. If I owned him, I’d consider shopping him around and trying to sell high as his hot start must be making many of his owners into true believers. But it’s tough because there obviously is some chance that his 2007 was somewhat for real, so you don’t want to sell and then look back on the season and realize you didn’t sell high enough.

For the few of you who picked up Brendan Harris as an injury stop-gap or own him in an AL-Only league, don’t count on him helping your average to continue. He should be good fo 10-15 HRs though so he’ll be worth a little in AL-Onlys, but given probable underwhelming Rs and RBIs on a poor Twins offense, he shouldn’t have any mixed league value.

Ryan Church has been a popular add in leagues after his hot start and temporary move into the 2-hole. I actually liked him last year and even drafted him in my mixed auction league as a reserve. But his high average so far is a mirage, and once that regresses, he’ll likely drop back to 6th behind Delgado, making him worth only a couple of bucks in mixed leagues.

 
Lots of buy low candidates on this week’s list. Thomas, Cano, Ortiz, Tulo, and Polanco are all fine and simply suffering from some bad luck on balls in play. Go get them cheaply if you can. Though, as a Tulo owner, I’m pissed Clint Hurdle made the smart decision to move Helton up to 2nd, which dropped Tulo to 6th. Hopefully this is only temporary and Tulo will move back up once his hits start dropping. Of course the move was probably made solely because Tulo has “struggled”, but we all know better than that, that he’s been just fine, and hitting into bad luck. I’m so glad these managers get paid when they don’t understand a thing about luck or regression to the mean.

I commented on both Ramon Hernandez and Corey Patterson in the first article, and they are here once again. Both of their xAVG’s have dropped, Hernandez’s going from .311 to .274, while Patterson’s has remained above .300. I still like Hernandez in a 2-catcher league, but Patterson has to hope his hits start dropping soon otherwise he’ll begin to lose more playing time. The funny thing about Patterson is that he usually sucks and deserves the crappy lines he puts up, but this year he’s posting yet another poor average, leading the uninformed to believe that he is sucking as usual, however this time he’s actually been unlucky and undeserving of the bad average. I’m very curious to see if the skills regress toward his career marks, keeping him at the low average, or if he has taken a legitimate step forward and we can expect his average to rise, possibly leading to a true breakout season.

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.