Jose Bautista's Random Variance +5 in Forecaster 11

[oscar15]

Am I missing something?

[StlSluggers]

I don't know, but I feel like I'm missing something.

[oscar15]

lol

I try to keep the wording of my post to a minimum.

If you are not familiar with The Baseball Forecaster the post makes no sense.

Random Variance means that a players performance from last year will probably move toward his career performance, or skill set.

+5 means that Bautista is due to rebound from last years performance.



Sorry for the confusion.

[daullaz]

Well, he did have a very small hit rate which led to his very high xBA (.330). The +5 Rand Var may be taking that hit rate/xBA into account.

[garf112]

I feel like the entire Blue Jays team had a terrible BABIP. Could that have something to do with the defenses they hit against being superior somehow?

[mweir145]

I feel like the entire Blue Jays team had a terrible BABIP. Could that have something to do with the defenses they hit against being superior somehow?

Team of flyball hitters that nearly breaks the 1997 Mariners team HR record=low team BABIP

Still, they probably had some bad luck too...they're the Jays.

[garf112]

I feel like the entire Blue Jays team had a terrible BABIP. Could that have something to do with the defenses they hit against being superior somehow?

Team of flyball hitters that nearly breaks the 1997 Mariners team HR record=low team BABIP

Still, they probably had some bad luck too...they're the Jays.

I know that there must be a ton of reasons why it is so low, it just seems strange that just about everyone on the team had a down batting average year.

Aaron Hill- career BABIP- .288, last year's .196 (lowest in the ML)
Jose Bautista- career- .270, last year's .233 (3rd lowest in the ML)
Edwin Encarnacion- career- .280, last year- .235
Vernon Wells- career- .288, last year- .272
Adam Lind- career- .303, last year- .277
Lyle Overbay- career- .317, last year- .285
Fred Lewis- career- .348, last year- .325

In addition, 15 of the lowest 35 BABIPs for the year spent at least part of their season in the AL East. If I had the time to do some more research and do BABIP by division, I'm sure I'd find that it was lower for the AL East than other divisions. There are definitely more fly ball pitchers in the division:

highest FB% for hitters

Blue Jays- 1st
Red Sox- 2nd
Rays- 5th
Yankees- 13th
Orioles- 22nd

highest FB% for pitchers

Rays- 1st
Orioles- 4th
Yankees- 7th
Red Sox- 10th
Blue Jays- 21st

In addition, AL East pitchers on average gave up a lower LD%.

[oscar15]

Here is the reply I received from baseballhq. Like I said, I'm not much of a stat guy.

Interesting that HR don't factor into the equation.


Hi Vance,

Actually, not a typo. If you look at the metrics that RandVar measures for hitters (h%, hr/f, and xBA) and compares to actual production, what the +5 is saying is that he got less value out of his 2010 skill set than we would have expected. For instance, look at his .260 BA compared to .330 xBA. When we see that sort of gap, we would normally expect BA improvement to be coming. Similarly, he had a 24% hit rate, compared to prior levels in the upper 20s.

Now, I wouldn't necessarily put a ton of stock in that +5, as some of the modeling that's going on there probably breaks down as you start to look at skills that are as outlying as Bautista's. For instance, the low h% is at least partially due to the fact that HR are excluded from that calculation, so that's 54 hits that he's not getting "credit" for there (since those are not, in fact, balls in play). It's a very unusual skill profile. The +5 is awfully interesting, but not necessarily predictive.

Hope this helps,

Ray Murphy
BaseballHQ

[Cleveland Steamers]

Here is the reply I received from baseballhq. Like I said, I'm not much of a stat guy.

Interesting that HR don't factor into the equation.


Hi Vance,

Actually, not a typo. If you look at the metrics that RandVar measures for hitters (h%, hr/f, and xBA) and compares to actual production, what the +5 is saying is that he got less value out of his 2010 skill set than we would have expected. For instance, look at his .260 BA compared to .330 xBA. When we see that sort of gap, we would normally expect BA improvement to be coming. Similarly, he had a 24% hit rate, compared to prior levels in the upper 20s.

Now, I wouldn't necessarily put a ton of stock in that +5, as some of the modeling that's going on there probably breaks down as you start to look at skills that are as outlying as Bautista's. For instance, the low h% is at least partially due to the fact that HR are excluded from that calculation, so that's 54 hits that he's not getting "credit" for there (since those are not, in fact, balls in play). It's a very unusual skill profile. The +5 is awfully interesting, but not necessarily predictive.

Hope this helps,

Ray Murphy
BaseballHQ

Thanks for taking the time to email them. I was curious as well.

[stoggie10]

Say Oscar what does the forecaster say about Car Go? Where would you draft him?