The wheels are starting to come off the wagon for the Cleveland Indians.
The Tribe had lost five games in a row before last night’s victory over the Twins. Scoring wasn’t the Indians’ biggest problem through the rough stretch—they’d given up 6.5 runs a game this month heading into Tuesday’s action. But with just seven runs scored in their last five games amidst Manny Acta’s lineup shuffling—even last night, Cleveland won 1-0—questions have begun to arise about the reliability of the Tribe’s lineup.
But before any judgment is passed down, we Indians fans owe it to ourselves to ask the question: Are Cleveland’s hitters playing poorly, or are they just getting unlucky?
To answer this question, we turn to Batting Average on Balls in Play, also known as “hit rate.” BABIP is exactly what it sounds like: the proportion of balls hit inside the confines of the diamond that result in the batter reaching base, which for most hitters is about 30% of the time. While some players have abnormal natural hit rates, most major variations from the mean—especially this early in the season—are due to random chance.
Thanks to The Hardball Times’ super-special awesome xBABIP calculator, we can get an estimate of what players’ hit rates would be in a luck-neutral environment based on factors like speed, power, strikeout rate, and batted-ball profile. By plugging his expected hit rate (xBABIP) in for his actual BABIP, we can get an idea of how a player would do in a completely neutral context.
Using their xBABIPs and Power Factors, I calculated luck-neutral slashlines for all 15 Indians to have come to the plate in 2011. Here are the results, sorted by the differences between their expected and actual OPS+’s:
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Starting at the top—wow, our catchers are getting really unlucky. We’ve covered Santana’s bad fortunes already, but that he is an above-average hitter even through his alleged “slump” and a true-talent MVP candidate (a 147 OPS+ is phenomenal for a catcher) is truly amazing. It’s comforting, too, that Marson would be tolerable offensively in a luck-neutral context.
Moving right along, we find some good news for the Tribe’s veteran infielders. Hannahan has regressed heavily since his hot start, but according to these numbers it’s not his fault. Meanwhile, Orlando Cabrera instantly jumps from miserable to merely bad. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Indians should wait to call up Lonnie Chisenhall and Cord Phelps—especially considering Cabrera’s poor defense—but it’s at least somewhat reassuring.
Next comes a whole slew of outfielders. Seeing Choo’s name here is no surprise (though his expected 110 OPS+ would still be a disappointment for him). The way Brantley is hitting, it’s hard to believe he could actually be better than he’s looked, but that’s what these stats suggest. Meanwhile, Buck gets a big boost (maybe hitting him high in the order isn’t such a bad idea after all) while Kearns and Duncan jump from awful to merely bad.
LaPorta and Asdrubal Cabrera stay exactly the same, which is fine with me. If this is the peak of LaPorta’s career it’s somewhat of a disappointment, but after what we’d seen of him before this year I’m just grateful that he is a significantly above average hitter. As for Cabrera—well, he can just keep on doin’ what he doin’.
Some interesting names show up on the lucky side. Sizemore has really cooled off after his scorching start, but it looks like he has farther to fall. He’ll still be a fine hitter, but in order to succeed he’ll really need to keep driving the ball if his walk rate doesn’t bounce back.
Other than that, though, there’s no real news at the bottom. Everett’s been even worse than we would have thought, but he’s a utility infielder and we didn’t bring him in for his bat. Carrera’s numbers look bad, but remember he’s had only eight at-bats. And Hafner—well, we said the sky was falling for him weeks ago.
Overall, it seems like Cleveland hitters are generally getting unlucky. A couple players are in for big regressions, but guys like Choo, Santana, and Hannahan can reasonably be expected to start hitting the ball better from this point forward.
Be careful not to read too much into these results. Remember, these are just estimates of what is most likely to happen—it’s entirely possible that Sizemore’s bad luck won’t catch up to him, or that Santana will actually end up outperforming his peripherals over the rest of the season.
In addition, these estimates are based on power, plate discipline batted-ball profiles to date, and that kind of thing can change as the season—if Hafner’s line-drive rate drops when he returns from the DL, so will his xBABIP. Finally, I think there’s a case to be made that this calculator systematically overestimates xBABIP—I have a hard time seeing Marson as a true-talent .330-BABIP guy.
Still, in the wake of the Indians’ cold streak and offensive slowdown, I think this shows that Cleveland isn’t in any real trouble—at least in terms of scoring runs. Look for Jobu to start waking up the Tribe’s bats in the near future.
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