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