Welcome to Behind the Plate With DJ, a weekly look at what is going on in the world of baseball. This series will weigh in on the interesting, the controversial, and the downright cool. The play of the week could be an incredible play or an unusual one. If something made you scratch your head, you will probably find it here. So sit back, relax, and let’s take a look at the week that was.
First Place Mariners
The Mariners are in first place this late in the season for the first time since 2003, when they lost their lead in the division on August 26th and finished second to the A’s. The Mariners have the third best record in the American League, behind the Orioles and Red Sox.
Surprisingly, the Mariners have done their best work on the road. They are 18-7 away from Seattle, while only going 8-10 at Safeco Field. They have done well in extra inning games (5-1), one-run games (9-6), and blowouts (9-2). The only team that they have a losing record against is the Angels (2-4), and they have plenty of games against them to make that up.
Robinson Cano has been leading the offensive charge, with team highs in batting average (.288), slugging percentage (.559), home runs (12), RBI (39), doubles (12), and runs scored (28). The Mariners have 6 players with 20+ runs scored and 5 with 15+ RBI. They are second in the American League in runs scored and third in home runs. This team has been hitting the ball and driving in runs with the best of them.
The Mariner pitching staff is holding their own as well. They have the second best ERA in the league and the third most strikeouts. Felix Hernandez leads the team with a 2.21 ERA and he passed Randy Johnson as the Mariners’ all-time strikeout king. Only Nate Karns is in the top 20 in the American League in strikeouts, but the rest of the starters are in the top 35.
The Mariners have established themselves as contenders with productive hitting and effective pitching. None of their players are over-achieving at this point, so there is no reason to suspect that they will falter. This could finally be the year that the Mariners get back to the playoffs for the first time since their 116-win 2001 season.
Hitting Streak
Jackie Bradley has gotten a hit in every game since April 24, a span of 28 games. He is hitting .408 over that span, with a .786 slugging percentage. He is not just hitting singles, with 18 of his 40 hits going for extra bases. He has driven in 29 and scored 17 runs during the streak, helping the Red Sox to a tie with the Orioles for first place in the AL East.
Bradley is halfway to the Major League record of 56 held by the immortal Joe DiMaggio. The most amazing thing about his streak is that he is doing it from the bottom of the Red Sox order. He has only hit higher than 6th in the lineup once during the streak, when he hit 2nd and went 1 for 5 against the Astros on May 14. In contrast, he has hit in the bottom third of the lineup 23 times.
Bradley has raised his batting average to .342, second in the American League. The leader is his teammate, Xander Bogaerts with a .346 average. Bradley is still has a long way to go before we start looking at DiMaggio’s streak, but he has been riding it for all it’s worth.
Advanced Stat of the week
Every week, Behind the Plate will look at an advanced stat that is being used in baseball. These stats give a better idea on what value a player gives a team. This week’s stat is BABIP.
BABIP is Batting Average on Balls In Play. This is a measure of how often a batter gets on base when he makes the defense make a play. The formula is (H-HR)/(AB-HR-K+SacFly). It is basically just the batting average with the home runs and strikeouts taken out and sacrifice flies added back in. A sacrifice fly does not affect the batting average, but it does lower the BABIP.
BABIP takes into account three factors: defense, luck, and good contact. A batter facing a great defense will probably get fewer hits, therefore his BABIP will go down. Conversely, if he hits the ball the exact same way against a poor defense, he will probably get more hits and his BABIP will go up. Luck comes into play on bloopers that find the perfect spot to become hits or hard hit line drives that are hit right at a player. Good luck and bad luck tend to even themselves out over larger sample sizes.
That leaves quality of contact. A hitter that squares the ball up better and has a tendency to hit hard line drives will likely get more hits over the long haul than a hitter that tends to hit bloopers and weak ground balls. Over the course of a season, a hitter will face all sorts of defenses and he will have good and bad luck. It will be the quality of contact that will have the greatest effect on BABIP.
The league average BABIP is typically around .300, but it is much more meaningful to compare a player’s BABIP to their career numbers. For instance, if a batter who has consistenty had a BABIP of .340 starts a season with a BABIP of .250, then it can be assumed that the batter is experiencing some bad luck and he will start to get more hits soon. The best hitters can have a BABIP of about .350, whereas the worst hitters in the league will have about a .260 for a full season.
Play of the Week
The Chicago White Sox completed their second triple play of the year on May 18, becoming the first team since the 2007 Philadelphia Phillies and the first American League team since the 2006 White Sox to have multiple triple plays in the same season.
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The triple play was the 705th in Major League history and the American League record 36th for the White Sox. This one was a more typical 5-4-3 triple play, as opposed to their 9-3-2-6-2-5 triple play they made on April 22.
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