Lucky Guys

Baseball is not only a game of immense skill but can be a game of, well, luck. Bloop & seeing-eye singles, flairs just out of the reach of fielders, broken bat hits, outfielders losing the ball in the sun; it happens. And some hitters have the fortune of more of these types of things falling in for hits than others. I like to use two stats (sometimes a third) to determine luck. The first, and most relevant, is called batting average of balls in play (or BaBIP). The formula takes hits, subtracts home runs and divides the total by at bats minus home runs and strikeouts: ((H-HR)/(AB-HR-SO)). The league average is around .300 (currently in the AL it is .303), anything greatly over that would be considered lucky and anything greatly below the mark would be considered unlucky. I also like to use a stat I call singles rate (1B%). It is simply the percentage of hits that are singles. And then I'll occasionally use ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average). This is supposed to measure a player's pure power. If this is a bit much, just watch how I use these stats when evaluating players. For reference, the 1B% of the AL is 0.656, the ISO is 0.172, and the BaBIP is 0.303

Top 5 Luckiest Guys in the AL
5. Kevin Youkilis, 3B, Boston Red Sox
The guy has a batting average of 0.309 but is it deserved? His 1B% of 0.674 is about on par with the average of the American League, his ISO is 0.144, but his BaBIP is 0.381. In other words you're looking at a pretty average AL starter who's had some luck go his way so far. He hasn't hit for too much power but a lot of singles have fallen in for him. I'd expect him to finish with a batting average of around 0.275 or 0.280 by season's end.

4. Derek Jeter, SS, New York Yankees
Finally some proof that Jeter gets more than he deserves. He's definitely been an above average player, his ISO (.190) and OPS (.978) suggest that. But he has an average 1B% and a very high BaBIP (.394). This means that he's hitting a lot singles that have found some holes. He's not a .348 hitter. Expect his average to drop to around his normal .315 self.

3. Casey Blake, OF, Cleveland Indians
I hesitate to do put him here because he's hitting the ball so well. His ISO is a spectacular .236 and his slugging percentage is .600. But that still doesn't dull the fact that his BaBIP is .423. This coupled with the fact that he's a career .255 hitter makes me wonder how he's batting .364 this year. But he's 32 years old and guys like Craig Paquette and Melvin Mora saw their batting averages shoot up at 32. Maybe it'll be the same for Blake.

2. Willy Mo Pena, OF, Boston Red Sox
A .417 BaBIP says it all. He's an above average slugger (a .191 ISO and a .500 slugging percentage) but a 1B% of .655 is almost dead on with the league average. When his BaBIP drops to the league average then I'd expect that .309 batting average to drop down to around .265.

1. Ben Broussard, 1B, Cleveland Indians
While the guy doesn't have quite enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title yet, casual observers would be very impressed by his .388 batting average so far this year. An above average 1B% of .725 means he's slapping quite a few singles and an astronomical .455 BaBIP means that more than a few of those singles should have been outs. Plus he's batting only .111 against lefties. I'd be surprised to see his batting average be over .300 when the season is over.