Twins, bad? Yes. Twins, unlucky? Most likely.

[d-mac]

Since MLB statcast has been made public, a number of baseball nerds have taken on the task of incorporating the data into a new framework for a better regression predictor for hitters. One such nerd over at Fangraphs, Andrew Perpetua, has created his own system for predicting and expected BABIP and expected OBA based on how hitters actually hit baseball- a great proxy for measuring the process of hitting- versus looking at what has happened, we are able to now have a rough estimate of what should have happened. 

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/eight-players-under-performing-their-xoba/

 

Andrew has posted an article highlighting some 8 of the top underperforming players (xOBA-wOBA) this year. Two of those names featured: Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe.

 

Dozier:

Expected: .237/.320/.413

To date: .200/.287/.336

Career: .237/.313/.406

 

Plouffe:

Expected: .281/.306/.487

To date: .252/.275/.383

Career: .245/.307/.418

 

In the article you can also find a link to his data published on a Google doc. You can filter by team and for both hitters and pitchers. Also included are full team stats. As a team the Twins should be expected to have hit: .245/.311/.416 versus the .235/.302/.375  that they did. That's an 18 point swing in wOBA that would bump them from 25th in baseball to 16th. 

 

Also interesting is the Joe Mauer has underperformed his xOBA by 82 points! He actually "should" have the 5th highest wOBA in baseball. Of course at this point, Andrew's xOBA doesn't adjust for park factors or shifts. And sadly I think Mauer is heavily penalized by Target Field (going oppo taco is hard) and he is easy to shift against (85% of his line drives and flies go to left or center, 90% of his grounders go to right or center). Byung-ho Park also has underperformed his xOBA by 42 points. 

 

Unfortunately, it appears Sano has not underperformed his xOBA this year- he's been right about where it predicts him to be at.  Nunez has overperformed by about 20 points, and amazingly, Eddie Rosario outperformed by 33 points! xOBA predicts him to have hit .179/.199/.292!

 

Also of note, all of the Twins pitchers (with at least 20IP) except Milone have a higher BABIP than should be expected. Though that doesn't mean they have been good- Only Abad, Tonkin, O'Rourke, and Nolasco (surprise!) have posted above league average xOBA. Kevin Jepsen, news flash, is not very good- his xOBA+ is 132.8. 

 

The Twins are still bad. Their offense may actually be average, but their pitching is still a mess at this point. 

[70charger]

To be historically bad, you usually need that magically toxic combination of ineptitude and bad luck. Looks like our guys have both so far. Let's hope the luck starts to change.

 

As an aside, is this supposed to be predictive too? I.e. can the underperformers be expected to turn it around based on this?