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Unlucky Hitters

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%

Data provided by The Hardball Times