57 replies to this topic

[Doomtints]

Mauer has been playing well since this was originally posted. April stats are often misleading. Turns out he is on pace for his best year since 2013 and not the worst year of his career. Patience is a virtue in baseball.

 

The OPs May prediction for Mauer was actually conservative.

Edited by Doomtints, 06 June 2017 - 10:30 AM.

[Mr. Brooks]

I'd definitely take the over on this. On the year, he has a .775 OPS with a .315 BABIP.
Career his BABIP is .340. That makes sense with his line-drive heavy profile.

Currently, he's right on track with his career line drives. But his ground ball% is better: 42.7% v 50.6% career. He's hitting a lot more fly balls.

Fly balls have a slightly lower BABIP than ground balls, (.239 v. .207) but they more than make up for it with the power potential (.020 ISO v. .378 ISO). So, with this batted ball profile, we'd expect to see his BABIP a little lower than career, but his slugging% higher than his career.

This is particularly true because he's hitting the ball as hard or harder than ever. His hard hit% is at 36.6% v 33.4% for his career. That is pre-concussion Mauer power:

Year Hard hit% OPS
2007 36.9% 808
2009 37.6% 1031
2010 41.7% 871
2012 37.1% 862
2013 37.4% 880

2017 36.6% 775

So I bet he ends up over 800 OPS, absent an injury.

Much of Mauer's career babip came before teams figured out how to shift him.
Whatever his babip is since then needs to be his baseline, not his career babip.
Maybe they are the same number, I haven't looked, but I doubt they are.

[Doomtints]

 

Much of Mauer's career babip came before teams figured out how to shift him.
Whatever his babip is since then needs to be his baseline, not his career babip.
Maybe they are the same number, I haven't looked, but I doubt they are.

 

True. Statcast hurt Mauer a lot. People thought he was spraying the ball all over the field, but it turns out he wasn't. His grounders tend to go one way and his fly balls go the other. Before statcast, no one made that connection, they just thought he could hit it anywhere.

[Mike Frasier Law]

 

Much of Mauer's career babip came before teams figured out how to shift him.
Whatever his babip is since then needs to be his baseline, not his career babip.
Maybe they are the same number, I haven't looked, but I doubt they are.

 

When would you say they figured out how to shift him? We could check the numbers. But I would guess his BABIP is more correlated with his batted ball profile (line drives) and hard hit% than the shift.

 

Here's his BABIP by year:

 

year     BABIP

2005   322

2006   364

2007   319

2008   342

2009   373

2010   348

2011   319

2012  364

2013    383

2014   342

2015    309

2016    301

[BK432]

 

 

When would you say they figured out how to shift him? We could check the numbers. But I would guess his BABIP is more correlated with his batted ball profile (line drives) and hard hit% than the shift.

 

Here's his BABIP by year:

 

year     BABIP

2005   322

2006   364

2007   319

2008   342

2009   373

2010   348

2011   319

2012  364

2013    383

2014   342

2015    309

2016    301

 

Yeah, I agree. It FEELS like Mauer was hurt by shifting, but I'm not convinced it has had more than a pretty small impact. I would agree that the larger impact in BABIP-regressions was his batted ball profile, as Mike suggests.

[Doomtints]

 

Yeah, I agree. It FEELS like Mauer was hurt by shifting, but I'm not convinced it has had more than a pretty small impact. I would agree that the larger impact in BABIP-regressions was his batted ball profile, as Mike suggests.

 

Aren't those the same thing? If Mauer profiles a certain way, the defense will shift.......

[BK432]

 

Aren't those the same thing? If Mauer profiles a certain way, the defense will shift.......

 

I meant the profile changes as more in hard-hit versus soft-hit and putting more balls in the air.

[Oxtung]

I'd definitely take the over on this. On the year, he has a .775 OPS with a .315 BABIP.
Career his BABIP is .340. That makes sense with his line-drive heavy profile.
 
Currently, he's right on track with his career line drives. But his ground ball% is better: 42.7% v 50.6% career. He's hitting a lot more fly balls.
 
Fly balls have a slightly lower BABIP than ground balls, (.239 v. .207) but they more than make up for it with the power potential (.020 ISO v. .378 ISO). So, with this batted ball profile, we'd expect to see his BABIP a little lower than career, but his slugging% higher than his career.
 
This is particularly true because he's hitting the ball as hard or harder than ever. His hard hit% is at 36.6% v 33.4% for his career. That is pre-concussion Mauer power:
 
Year   Hard hit%   OPS
2007  36.9%        808
2009  37.6%        1031
2010  41.7%        871
2012  37.1%        862 
2013  37.4%       880
 
2017  36.6%         775
 
So I bet he ends up over 800 OPS, absent an injury.

I'm on a phone and won't elaborate greatly but his statcast numbers of hard hit balls are very similar to last years numbers. That suggests his BABIP will be similar barring luck.

[Mike Frasier Law]

 

I'm on a phone and won't elaborate greatly but his statcast numbers of hard hit balls are very similar to last years numbers. That suggests his BABIP will be similar barring luck.

 

 His average exit velocity may be similar to last year, but there are other key differences.

 

He's hitting far fewer ground balls (42.7% v 51.9%)

He's hitting opposite field again. Last year his pull% was 30.8% and his oppo% was 35.2%. This year it's 22.2% and 42.5% respectively.

His average exit velocity might be the same, but that's an average. Last year he hit more soft and more medium contact but less hard contact. I can see how that would about average out, but the results are very different.

 

year     soft% med% hard%

2016    13.4%    55.3%  31.3%

2017   11.8%   51.6%  36.6%

 

So he's traded some weak and medium contact for harder contact, and he's hitting opposite field more than he's ever done in his career.

 

 

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Yeah, I agree. It FEELS like Mauer was hurt by shifting, but I'm not convinced it has had more than a pretty small impact. I would agree that the larger impact in BABIP-regressions was his batted ball profile, as Mike suggests.

Yep. The more I've dug into Mauer's batting numbers, the more I shake my head in disbelief that anyone refutes his rapid decline was due to anything but the concussion.

 

Sure, the guy lost .030 BABIP.

 

But explain how he lost .050 batting average.

 

Hint: the answer is in his batted ball profile. He stopped hitting the ball hard. It's almost as if his hand-eye coordination lost just a tick of its accuracy for some completely unknown reason. Anyone have any ideas how that could have come about?

[DrNeau]

Joe Mauer's stats - as of 6/6/17:

 

G: 47

2B: 11

3B: 0

HR: 4

RBI: 23

SB: 0

AVG: .287

OBP: .359

SLG: .416

OPS: .774

 

Lots of dialogue about a resurgence. He has been a little bit better this year than last year. Not much more.

[yarnivek1972]

That at bat was a shift induced out. If the left fielder isn't swung way over, that's a no play foul ball and Joe is still alive.

Mauer has shown some ability to pull the ball in the air. And when he does he usually has success. But as long as he hits predictably, outfielders will be in position to make outs on balls no matter how hard he hits them.

[Taildragger8791]

It's nice to see Mauer is on a good hitting streak but I'll wait a few months to say he's back to form or reports of his decline were silly and out of line. We've seen him get hot for stretches before. I hope he carries it through the year but I'll reserve judgement until it's proven out over more than a month or two.

[Oxtung]

His average exit velocity may be similar to last year, but there are other key differences.
 
He's hitting far fewer ground balls (42.7% v 51.9%)
He's hitting opposite field again. Last year his pull% was 30.8% and his oppo% was 35.2%. This year it's 22.2% and 42.5% respectively.
His average exit velocity might be the same, but that's an average. Last year he hit more soft and more medium contact but less hard contact. I can see how that would about average out, but the results are very different.
 
year     soft% med% hard%
2016    13.4%    55.3%  31.3%
2017   11.8%   51.6%  36.6%
 
So he's traded some weak and medium contact for harder contact, and he's hitting opposite field more than he's ever done in his career.

The statcast data does not back up you're hard hit ball assertions. The data shows that the percentage of balls that he is barreling and the percentage of balls hit >95 mph, not the average but those hard hit balls that actually improve your slugging and bat avg, are almost identical to last seasons numbers.

[Oxtung]

The statcast data does not back up you're hard hit ball assertions. The data shows that the percentage of balls that he is barreling and the percentage of balls hit >95 mph, not the average but those hard hit balls that actually improve your slugging and bat avg, are almost identical to last seasons numbers.

I should add that while intuitively it makes sense we don't have a good handle yet on the correlation between barrels, hard hit balls and BABIP. I'm assuming that last seasons .300ish BABIP is an accurate representation given his batted ball profile but it could be an either lucky or un lucky. We just don't really know yet.

[jimmer]

Yesterday, I was watching the KC game and they brought up a statistic that showed Mauer tied for 2nd in game winning RBI for the AL.

[Thegrin]

Do you think, perhaps, that Joe was sitting around last winter and decided he was going to have to

conscientiously hit the ball harder.  Couldn't hurt.  

 

[Mike Frasier Law]

 

Joe had a .403 BABIP in May which is unsustainable. Of course his .243 in April was as well. Without doing the actual math and assuming he continues to strike the ball as he has so far this season he should end up somewhere between .750 and .800 OPS for season.

 

 

I'd definitely take the over on this. On the year, he has a .775 OPS with a .315 BABIP.

Career his BABIP is .340. That makes sense with his line-drive heavy profile.

 

Currently, he's right on track with his career line drives. But his ground ball% is better: 42.7% v 50.6% career. He's hitting a lot more fly balls.

 

Fly balls have a slightly lower BABIP than ground balls, (.239 v. .207) but they more than make up for it with the power potential (.020 ISO v. .378 ISO). So, with this batted ball profile, we'd expect to see his BABIP a little lower than career, but his slugging% higher than his career.

 

This is particularly true because he's hitting the ball as hard or harder than ever. His hard hit% is at 36.6% v 33.4% for his career. That is pre-concussion Mauer power:

 

Year   Hard hit%   OPS

2007  36.9%        808

2009  37.6%        1031

2010  41.7%        871

2012  37.1%        862 

2013  37.4%       880

 

2017  36.6%         775

 

So I bet he ends up over 800 OPS, absent an injury.

 

Well....u/Oxtung guessed an OPS between 750 and 800 and I took the over. 801 OPS for the win!