Jhonny Peralta’s Offensive Production

Jhonny Peralta is hitting .267/.347/.405 so far this year with 4 HR, 18 RBI and a 106 OPS+ in 240 PA.  This is somewhat of a disappointment as he hit .299/.345/.478 with 21 HR, 86 RBI and a 123 OPS+ in a breakout season in 2011.  At only 30 years old, he was supposed to build off of that year and continue to be an offensive force.  However, except for his on-base percentage, he’s fallen off quite a bit back to his career numbers.  Was last year a fluke?  Or is Peralta getting unlucky this year?

As mentioned, his OBP has been up this year thanks mostly to his high BB rate, 10.4%.  It hadn’t reached 10% since his 2004 and 2005 seasons.  This is very encouraging.  His strikeout rate has been slightly decreasing since 2010 (16.7% in 2010; 16.5% in 2011; 16.3% so far in 2012).  This has given Peralta his best walk to strikeout ratio of his career.  So he must be seeing the ball pretty well this year.  His plate discipline numbers back this up too.  His swinging strike rate (swing and misses/total pitches) is the lowest of his career, 8.0% and his contact rate is the highest in his career at 82.9%. 

So, if he’s seeing the ball well, why hasn’t he been producing?  Well, according to FanGraphs, he has a 28.3% LD rate.  Not only is this the highest of his career, but it’s top 5 in all of baseball, behind Joey Votto (33.0%), Freddie Freeman (30.9%), Jason Kubel (29.5%) and Alejandro De Aza (29.4%).  Hitting line drives is important because they fall in for base hits more frequently than any other type of batted ball, typically around 72% of the time.  The fact that Peralta has hit this many line drives and has as low of a batting average as he does seems unusual.  One quick measurement of luck is to add .120 to his line drive rate and compare it to his BABIP; if it’s higher than he’s been unlucky, if it’s lower than he’s been lucky.  .283 + .120 = .403.  Peralta’s BABIP is currently at .308; which isn’t too far away from his career .314 mark.  However, putting it in perspective of his line drive rate shows that maybe Peralta has been a little unlucky this year.

Peralta’s HR/FB rate is currently at 7.0%, the lowest he’s ever put up.  Last year it was at 10.8% and his career mark it 11.0%, so this seems unusual.  His FB% of 32.9% is pretty low for him as the last 2 years it’s been 43.4% and 44.2%.  Hitting more line drives instead of fly balls is usually a good trade-off.  Sure, the homers decrease, but usually the average and sometimes the slugging percentage increase.  This hasn’t been the case for Peralta.  Although, we still have a little more than half a season to go, so maybe Peralta has a home run tear in him before the end of the season.

Peralta has a career .329 wOBA and 100 wRC+ and he currently has a .328 wOBA and 104 wOBA.  So it seems like he’s right where he should be.  However, the advanced numbers suggest something different.  Peralta has been seeing and hitting the ball in a way that should result in better results.  And maybe his luck is finally changing.  Over his last 78 PA, he’s hitting .324/.397/.529 with 2 HR.

I propose that we make Peralta the #5 hitter, where the Tigers have had difficulty getting consistent production.  Sure, the numbers on the surface show that this might not be a good idea, but as Peralta has shown over his last 21 games, his luck might already be changing and the Tigers could reap great reward from it.

Regressing Quintin Berry

The hot topic today is Quintin Berry.  Should he be starting?  Or is he nothing more than a bench player?  The general consensus is that his .473 BABIP is unsustainable due to a small sample size and that he’ll regress.  The question then becomes, what will he regress to?  What is his true talent?  And is his true talent an everyday player?

In the minors, Berry has consistently averaged about an 11% BB rate.  So far in the majors, it’s at 6.7%.  A walk rate is something that usually translates well from the minors to the majors.  The biggest reason that his walk rate hasn’t translated well, yet, is because of the small sample.  Also, when you’re hitting the ball, there’s no time to walk.  I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this will increase.  I’ll give him a 9.5% BB% as his true talent.

Next is the strikeout rate.  This has been a problem for Berry.  In 2012, in the minors, it was at 25%.  In the majors, it’s at 25.8%.   Pretty consistent.  In his career in the minors, it was at 18.9%.  In time, Berry could improve on this number, but for now it’ll probably stay at around 25%.

Now let’s look at his balls in play.  For this, I’m going to use two different sources, Baseball-reference and FanGraphs.  Sometimes, there’s a discrepancy in how these balls in play are classified and using two sources should minimize this flaw.

Baseball-reference:

25 Ground Balls (52.1%), 13 hits, 1 2B

13 Fly Balls (27.1%), 3 hits, 2 3B

10 Line Drives (20.8%), 7 hits, 2 2B

FanGraphs:

23 Ground Balls (47.9%), 11 hits, 1 2B

10 Fly Balls (20.8%), 2 hits, 2 3B

15 Line Drives (31.3%), 10 hits, 2 2B

According to Minor League Central, over the last two years, Quintin Berry has a 48.2% ground ball rate, so seeing this high ground ball rate at the major league level isn’t surprising.  What is surprising is the number of hits he’s getting on ground balls; a .520 average according to Baseball-reference and a .478 average according to FanGraphs.  This is where the majority of the regression will take place.  What is “normal,” though?  According to FanGraphs, the league average on ground balls is .227.  However, Berry is a speedster, so we can expect that number to increase, slightly.  How much?  Ichiro has a .297 average on ground balls.  Juan Pierre has a career .240 average on ground balls.  Somewhere in the middle would probably be about right.

Using Baseball-reference stats, giving Berry a .280 average on ground balls (subtracting 6 “lucky” hits), would give Berry a slash line of .256/.341/.359/.700.

Using FanGraphs stats, giving Berry a .261 average on ground balls (subtracting 5 “lucky” hits), would give Berry a .269/.352/.372/.724 slash line.

One problem with using FanGraphs stats is that it shows that he has a 31.3% line drive rate.  In the minors in 2011-2012, this number was 17.9%, so Baseball-reference is probably closer to his “true” talent. 

Putting it all together, with the 9.5% walk rate, 25% strikeout rate, .280 average on ground balls, and a lower than average average on fly balls and line drives (to show his poor power), given 650 PA:

.234/.325/.329/.654 You can check my math here.

So, is this good enough production for your starting LF?

Max Scherzer’s Strange Season

Scherzer pitched a great game on Sunday, 7 IP, 2 ER, 1 BB, 15 K.  Those 15 strikeouts propelled Scherzer to the top of the leader board in K/9 at 11.65.  Scherzer also leads in another category, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .394.  This is a main reason why his ERA is an unimpressive 5.73, even though there are several ERA predictors that say it should be lower (3.88 FIP, 3.34 xFIP, 4.19 tERA, 3.00 SIERA).

One of the things that made Sunday’s start so impressive was that all 15 strikeouts were swinging strikeouts.  His swinging strike percentage* (12.5%) has been high all year, currently tied for second only behind Cole Hamels (13.0%).  Jeff Samardzija and Edwin Jackson also have a 12.5% swinging strikeout percentage.

*Swinging strikeout percentage is the number of swing and misses divided by total number of pitches.

Looking further in PITCH f/x data, batters have swung at 47.9% of his pitches.  Only 79.3% of those swings has contact was made, which is currently 4th lowest in all of baseball behind Anthony Bass, Edwin Jackson and Cole Hamels.  Batters have swung at 68.1% of the pitches that were in the strike zone, but again, batters haven’t been making a lot of contact, only 79.3% of those swings contact was made (3rd lowest in the league behind Justin Verlander and Matt Moore). 

So, Scherzer has done a great job of deception; lots of swings with very little contact.  The contact that has been made has been damaging….or has it?   Not all balls in play are equal.  Line drives are base hits more often then fly balls and ground balls.  Ground balls are preferable because they lack the extra base potential that fly balls have (for example it’s impossible to hit a home run when hitting a ground ball).

Scherzer’s breakdown is:
2012 – 20.3% LD, 37.6% GB, 42.1% FB, 0.89 GB/FB
2011 – 20.2% LD, 40.3% GB, 39.5% FB, 1.02 GB/FB
Career – 20.2% LD, 40.6% GB, 39.2% FB, 1.04 GB/FB


The line drive rate is the most important one, as most damage is done with that, but Scherzer’s rate is nearly identical to what he’s always done.  He is allowing more fly balls than ground balls, which is the opposite of what he usually does.  In fact, fly balls are base hits less often than ground balls, so this reversal should show a lower BABIP, not a higher one.  This is the reason why his ERA predictors are lower than his actual ERA.

There are two things against Scherzer.  His BB rate has never been higher, currently at 3.51 BB/9.  And he’s allowed more home runs than ever before, he currently has a 14.3% HR/FB ratio.  However, neither of these stats show up in BABIP; walks aren’t hits and home runs aren’t “in play.”

One conclusion is that the Tigers defense is awful…and well, it is.  The Tigers are 24th in defensive runs saved at -18, and 29th in Ultimate Zone Rating at -15.7.  So, therefore, the other Tigers pitchers must be experiencing high BABIP, right?  No, not really.

Justin Verlander is 3rd in all of baseball with the lowest BABIP at .221.  Verlander has been just as good as Scherzer in deception.  He’s tied for 5th in all of baseball in lowest contact rate at 74.3% (Scherzer is 4th at 73.9%).  Verlander leads all of baseball in lowest contact rate in the zone at 77.9% (Scherzer is 3rd at 79.3%). 

Verlander is better at limiting the damage of contact:
Verlander – 18.9% LD, 40.5% GB, 40.5% FB, 1.00 GB/FB
Scherzer - 20.3% LD, 37.6% GB, 42.1% FB, 0.89 GB/FB

However, that’s not a dramatic difference and certainly not one that should result in a 173 point difference in BABIP.  So what is making Verlander’s BABIP so low and Scherzer’s so high?  The only logical explanation is that this an aberration resulting in a small sample size.  Scherzer has only pitched a little over 48 innings this year and if he continues to do what he has been doing, everything should equal out by season’s end.