Unlucky Hitters

by Matthew on Jul 7, 2008 4:52 PM PDT in The More You Know Comment 19 comments

A quick and dirty measure to check how lucky or unlucky a hitter has been is to compare said hitter's line drive rate (LD%) with his batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Generally, a hitter's BABIP should hover around 11 points higher than his LD%. It's not as pure luck of a number as a pitcher's BABIP since hitters do have some control over batted balls and things like footspeed (for heavy groundball hitters) can skew the results, but it's a good 5-second proxy.

That being said, as of conclusion of play yesterday, here's the twenty most unlucky and lucky hitters (min. 200 PA) as measured by BABIP-LD%.

Unlucky						Lucky
Last	First	Team	LD%	BABIP	Diff	Last	First	Team	LD%	BABIP	Diff
Sanchez	Freddy	PIT	23.90%	0.242	0.300%	Berkman	Lance	HOU	16.50%	0.367	20.200%
Schneider	Brian	NYN	28.20%	0.298	1.600%	Uggla	Dan C	FLA	14.10%	0.341	20.000%
Konerko	Paul	CHA	20.30%	0.229	2.600%	Lewis	Fred D	SF	18.70%	0.377	19.000%
Swisher	Nick T	CHA	24.30%	0.269	2.600%	Jones	Adam L	BAL	17.90%	0.356	17.700%
Rollins	Jimmy	PHI	25.00%	0.280	3.000%	Gomez	Carlos A	MIN	17.00%	0.347	17.700%
Hernandez	Ramon	BAL	22.20%	0.257	3.500%	Gerut	Jody	SD	15.80%	0.331	17.300%
Beltre	Adrian	SEA	21.50%	0.252	3.700%	Hardy	J.J.	MIL	14.10%	0.309	16.800%
Byrnes	Eric	ARI	18.80%	0.226	3.800%	Laird	Gerald	TEX	18.50%	0.351	16.600%
Vidro	Jose	SEA	19.00%	0.228	3.800%	Young	Delmon D	MIN	18.30%	0.343	16.000%
Carroll	Jamey	CLE	29.30%	0.331	3.800%	Holliday	Matt T	COL	22.60%	0.385	15.900%
Stewart	Shannon	TOR	22.00%	0.259	3.900%	Gathright	Joey R	KC	13.40%	0.291	15.700%
Izturis	Cesar	STL	20.40%	0.245	4.100%	Matsui	Hideki	NYA	19.00%	0.346	15.600%
Ludwick	Ryan	STL	28.20%	0.323	4.100%	Pence	Hunter A	HOU	15.10%	0.306	15.500%
Tejada	Miguel	HOU	25.50%	0.297	4.200%	Varitek	Jason	BOS	12.10%	0.275	15.400%
Patterson	Corey	CIN	14.60%	0.188	4.200%	Matsui	Kaz	HOU	16.30%	0.317	15.400%
Duncan	Chris E	STL	23.50%	0.279	4.400%	Jeter	Derek	NYA	15.50%	0.307	15.200%
Johjima	Kenji	SEA	18.30%	0.228	4.500%	Granderson	Curtis	DET	18.40%	0.333	14.900%
Izturis	Maicer E	LAA	23.00%	0.275	4.500%	Ramirez	Hanley	FLA	18.70%	0.336	14.900%
Scutaro	Marco	TOR	24.70%	0.293	4.600%	Harris	Brendan	MIN	16.10%	0.310	14.900%
Mora	Melvin	BAL	19.00%	0.243	5.300%	Iguchi	Tadahito	SD	18.00%	0.328	14.800%