The 2015 Hitter xBABIP Overachievers – A Review

Yesterday, I reviewed my 2015 hitter xBABIP underachievers and the results were fantastic. Today, I’m going to review the flip side, the 2015 hitter xBABIP overachievers. Let’s see how this group performed.

Obviously, a formula was completely unnecessary to determine that Chris Colabello had little, if any, chance to sustain a .400+ BABIP. He actually ended up topping the xBABIP overachiever list and my hitters with major HR/FB rate downside list, so I’m hoping exactly zero of you rostered him this year! He ended up recording just 32 plate appearances with the Blue Jays thanks to a PED suspension, so I removed him from the Unweighted Avg 2016 BABIP and 2016 BABIP – 2015 BABIP columns.

Kris Bryant didn’t just come with immense power potential, but also a history of high BABIP marks in the minors. Still, it was highly unlikely he could sustain a BABIP anywhere near .380 given a 45% fly ball rate. That just doesn’t last. Sure enough, it regressed heavily, but still remained solidly above average.

It was quite a surprise, to say the least, when Miguel Sano BABIP’d .396 during his 2015 debut after posting just a .315 mark that same season at Double-A. So you had to assume that the fly baller was going to experience some serious regression, and regress he did. His batting average plummeted 30 points, as a result, highlighting how risky high strikeout guys are when their BABIPs come crashing down to Earth.

I was fairly confident that an imminent cratering in Odubel Herrera’s BABIP would cause him to be a bust this year and perhaps lose his job. His BABIP did decline, but he improved other parts of his game and actually posted a slightly better wOBA than 2015.

Randal Grichuk was in Miguel Sano territory with big power, and a high strikeout rate being hidden by an inflated BABIP. But this year a collapse of his BABIP caused Grichuk to actually lose his job and get demoted to the minors for a time. Unlike Sano though, he doesn’t offset those strikeouts with walks, so his offensive value comes solely from his home runs.

Even with blazing speed, there was no way Dee Gordon was going to maintain anywhere near a .383 BABIP. Though he traded some liners for fly balls and popped up slightly more often, he posted a similar batted ball profile as last year, but his BABIP plummeted, as expected. Still, all those grounders and a below average IFFB%, plus a spray approach, is going to ensure an above average BABIP.

Man, xBABIP predicted a falloff in Bryce Harper’s BABIP, but not like this! This is the first year his BABIP has slipped below .300 and it’s hard to see what happened. Sure, he hit fewer line drives and a couple of more pop-ups, but that wasn’t nearly enough to explain a more than 100 point drop in BABIP! Obviously, he enjoyed some great fortune last year and then the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction next year. Since his power also returned to its pre-2015 levels, I’m real curious to see how much cheaper he is in drafts this year versus last. Of course, he suddenly decided to steal 21 bases, so perhaps he won’t go for a significant discount.

I was bearish on Addison Russell’s fantasy value heading into the season and a BABIP I expected to drop was one reason why. He continued to hit far too many pop-ups and pull the ball often, which finally took its toll on his BABIP. It’s amazing that he managed to knock in 95 runs when the vast majority of his plate appearances came from the bottom half of the lineup. It’s not even like he hit so well with runners on base, it was likely the result of the Cubs offense being so darn good.

So Xander Bogaerts‘ batted ball distribution (ground ball and fly ball rates) settled in between his 2014 and 2015 seasons, but he was suddenly afflicted with major pop-up issues. Normally, that would really suppress BABIP, but his .335 mark was still well above league average.

So in 2015, Nelson Cruz enjoyed his best offensive season since 2010, and a lot of that was thanks to an inflated .350 BABIP. That seemed fluky though and that BABIP did tumble this year, but not as far as one may have feared. It’s pretty amazing that Cruz has now posted his second highest and fourth highest BABIP marks over his career in the last two seasons.

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10 for 10! Now granted, if you look at the 2015 BABIP marks, you might think “duh, these were all like the highest BABIP guys, odds heavily favored some sort of decline.” This is true, though it wasn’t exactly an ordered list of the top guys. Some didn’t make the list. And Russell only posted a .324 BABIP and made the list. If you followed this list and avoided the names, you would have saved yourself some heartache from four busts (Colabello, Sano, Grichuk, Harper).