Sources of AVG Upside? High Contact Rates and Line Drive Percentages

by faketeams on Jun 15, 2009 4:00 PM EDT in Baseball

With everyday players garnering more than 200 ABs this season, the ability to ferret out possible buy low players for batting average upside becomes more challenging as the high ABs make it harder to determine who has shaken-off a poor start and returned to their expected levels of production. This is where the data mining of peripherals statistics becomes helpful.

Using Batting Average, Contact Rate and Line Drive Percentage, my intuition tells me those players with a high contact rate and good LD% should have a good AVG. If they do not, then there exists the possibility of a positve return as the AVG catches up with the peripherals.

Normally, I take a list like this and discard the players I don't believe make a difference. It is the players that have a solid track record who catch my eye. In this case, just 29 players had an AVG under .250, a contact rate of 85% or more and a LD% of 15% or higher. So I left the list unaltered.

Is my intuition regarding the relationship between AVG, contact rate and LD% correct?

Last	Tm	BA	Contact Rate	LD%
Brian Schneider	NYN	0.205	0.9744	0.179
Yuniesky Betancourt	SEA	0.237	0.9227	0.173
Shane M Robinson	STL	0.24	0.92	0.167
Orlando Cabrera	OAK	0.232	0.912	0.197
Augie Ojeda	ARI	0.237	0.8983	0.19
Jimmy Rollins	PHI	0.217	0.8951	0.171
Ramon Hernandez	CIN	0.248	0.8861	0.188
Jose C Lopez	SEA	0.247	0.8851	0.193
Vernon Wells	TOR	0.238	0.8846	0.167
Daniel Murphy	NYN	0.238	0.8841	0.193
Mike Sweeney	SEA	0.237	0.8817	0.173
Chad A Tracy	ARI	0.203	0.8814	0.17
Mark Loretta	LAN	0.24	0.88	0.197
Ty Wigginton	BAL	0.235	0.8765	0.169
Jason Kendall	MIL	0.227	0.875	0.234
Eric Byrnes	ARI	0.216	0.8743	0.155
Coco Crisp	KC	0.228	0.8722	0.176
Brian Giles	SD	0.197	0.8716	0.189
Carlos J Quentin	CHA	0.229	0.8702	0.191
Josh Bard	WAS	0.239	0.8657	0.155
John McDonald	TOR	0.227	0.8636	0.211
Aaron Miles	CHN	0.2	0.8609	0.224
Chad Moeller	BAL	0.2	0.86	0.209
Alex Gonzalez	CIN	0.225	0.858	0.219
Dioner F Navarro	TB	0.205	0.8541	0.165
Ryan J Sweeney	OAK	0.246	0.8534	0.217
Willy Taveras	CIN	0.229	0.8507	0.167
Luis O Rodriguez	SD	0.23	0.8506	0.197

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3 names stand out there

Jimmy Rollins, Vernon Wells, and Carlos Quentin. The rest are known low average guys (see Kendall) and free swingers with low OBP (see Byrnes)

"That's not a weird stat. Rickie is a run-scorer," Yost said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter," Yost told reporters. "See, you guys have no concept. He's a run-scorer. So there's nothing weird about it. That's what he does."

by Hyatt on Jun 15, 2009 5:28 PM EDT reply actions