GDT 5/2/17: Braves vs. Mets

Southcack77 said:
Per fangraphs the league wide BABIP is generally .300 in a given season, which correlates with how the teams have finished in the rankings of BABIP over the years, so that seems right.

You are adjusting the Braves BABIP down to at much below the MLB average as they are above it currently. A .290 BABIP would have rated 26th in the majors last season. Considering they would need to be a good bit below .290 to finish the season there --- eyeballing the math maybe something like .285-.288 you would be predicting them to have a bottom three BABIP the rest of the way, which really doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering all of the information about this incarnation of the Braves lineup suggests they are above average on ball in play in what looks about like a half season.

I don't agree with your assumptions.

We know that BABIP can be a skill. I don't see much to suggest that this is a bottom third offense until injuries kick in or trades. I would expect any cooling off would be offset by Inciarte, Swanson, Garcia heating up (two of which seems to be in progress).
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MLB BABIP is 290 for 2017. That is the reason I adjusted it for that. If/when the league BABIP goes up to 300 like it usually does then either 1 or 2 things will happen. Either the Braves BABIP will go up to match what it going on league wide so they maintain their ranking. Or if they do stay at the 310 BABIP range then their overall offensive ranking will go down as the rest of the league improves.
 
thewupk said:
Because you are talking about the 1 extreme in baseball where a hitter can constantly get pitched around in some situations. That does not apply to the rest of the lineup.
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But conceptually protection exists then.
 
thethe said:
But conceptually protection exists then.
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If you want to call it protection then you can call it that. Pitchers will pitch to hitters differently in certain in game situations. Generally it involves pitching around batters. Either walking them outright or hoping they get themselves out. Nobody has ever denied this. What I, and others, have argued is that hitter A isn't suddenly going to get better pitches to hit because hitter B is now behind them. People last year tried to claim that Freeman's power surge was a result of getting better pitches to hit because of Kemp. That logically doesn't make sense. Why feed fastballs to a top 5 hitter in baseball so he can hit them out?
 
thewupk said:
MLB BABIP is 290 for 2017. That is the reason I adjusted it for that. If/when the league BABIP goes up to 300 like it usually does then either 1 or 2 things will happen. Either the Braves BABIP will go up to match what it going on league wide so they maintain their ranking. Or if they do stay at the 310 BABIP range then their overall offensive ranking will go down as the rest of the league improves.
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You argue the Braves are benefitting from a small sample size of BABIP, but you want to argue that they are going to normalize to a .290 BABIP because that's what the league is hitting in the small sample size?

Unless you are aware of some external fact that I am not aware of, there is no reason to expect BABIP to drop precipitously this year.

Major league teams probably only need a BABIP of .303 or so the rest of the way to bring the small sample up to something like .300 BABIP that has been the norm. If the Braves simply continue with the .310 BABIP their ranking is unlikely to change to much.

you certainly could be right that we've seen a half season lucky spike in the Braves BABIP. I'm not sure how likely it is that is the case, but you could be right.

I haven't looked at your other number sets. You may have better argument there.
 
Southcack77 said:
You argue the Braves are benefitting from a small sample size of BABIP, but you want to argue that they are going to normalize to a .290 BABIP because that's what the league is hitting in the small sample size?

Unless you are aware of some external fact that I am not aware of, there is no reason to expect BABIP to drop precipitously this year.

Major league teams probably only need a BABIP of .303 or so the rest of the way to bring the small sample up to something like .300 BABIP that has been the norm. If the Braves simply continue with the .310 BABIP their ranking is unlikely to change to much.

you certainly could be right that we've seen a half season lucky spike in the Braves BABIP. I'm not sure how likely it is that is the case, but you could be right.

I haven't looked at your other number sets. You may have better argument there.
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A 10 point increase in BABIP is something like 20-30 points in OPS. Say you are right and the league as a whole improves by that much and the Braves simply stand pat. Their ranking will drop some.
 
Braves have given up 44 runs at home and scored 44 through 9 games. That's roughly 4.9 runs per team.
Braves have given up 77 runs on the road and scored 74 in 16 games. That's 4.81 allowed a game and a 4.62 scored per game.

This doesn't take into effect the away stadiums that they played in. Early returns are clearly favoring the Braves new digs as being a hitters park. Nearly 10 runs a game combined versus nearly 9.5 runs a game combined on the road.
 
Southcack77 said:
One of your five is a bench player. One is a platoon catcher whose platoon mate is drastically underperforming.
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A bench player who had significant playing time to this point with another BABIP over peformer on the bench. All ab's count for this number. You might be right in regards to Suzuki/Flowers. But Suzuki's xBABIP is 239. Not exactly the 200 that his BABIP is right now but still a lot lower than his career BABIP. Suzuki just makes ****ty contact.
 
thewupk said:
Indeed.
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200w.gif
 
I think SunTrust will be a hitter's park...not drastically so, but we should see some offense at home. Freeman has indicated the lighting there is also really friendly for hitters, that he's able to see the ball better there than at most other parks.
 
thewupk said:
A 10 point increase in BABIP is something like 20-30 points in OPS. Say you are right and the league as a whole improves by that much and the Braves simply stand pat. Their ranking will drop some.
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In BABIP OR OPS?

It likely would not drop in BABIP.
 
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