G-Snarls

Matt Williams career slash line: .268/.317/.489 OPS .805 Brett Lawrie career so far: .264/.323/.420 OPS .743 Give Brett some of whatever Williams was using and the slugging probably goes up 50+ points

Are you referring to his first comment? Or the second one? LOL

Matt Williams maybe? (minus the ovious PED-enhanced HR numbers) Power potential but prone to bad seasons. Modest to subpar OBP skills. Excellent defense with a couple of gold gloves

Right. There is undoubtedly luck and non-pitcher factors at play. But I can't believe that that is all of it. R. A. Dickey is a great example of that. Days where he has a crazy amount of action on his knuckeball , in addition to striking more out, many balls made contact with are weak dribblers and popups. When he has a bad day and they're not moving like he wants, he gets hit hard with line drives and long fly balls. No one can convince me that how he's throwing has a negligible impact on the result of that game, and that luck is the difference.

Excellent point

Here's something I was wondering. If BABIP off a pitcher is mostly luck, you would expect no relationship in the stat between good or bad pitchers. If it is largely influenced by pitcher skill, you'd expect there to be a big difference. As a quick and dirty check I looked up the 10 pitchers with the highest and lowest BaBIPs on Fangraphs: 10 pitchers with lowest BABIPs in 2013: 1 Jose Fernandez 0.240 2 A.J. Griffin 3 Travis Wood 4 Clayton Kershaw 5 Madison Bumgarner 6 Hisashi Iwakuma 7 Scott Feldman 8 Max Scherzer 9 Jarrod Parker 10 Miguel Gonzalez 0.260 That's a mostly quality list of guys by any measure, but... 10 pitchers with highest BABIPs in 2013 1 Bud Norris 0.333 2 Joe Saunders 3 Doug Fister 4 Edinson Volquez 5 Edwin Jackson 6 Justin Verlander 7 Rick Porcello 8 Lance Lynn 9 Jeff Samardzija 10 Felix Hernandez 0.314 Some very good pitchers on there too. This doesn't answer the question, and I do agree there HAS to be some luck involved in pitcher BABip. How much of it is luck? 50%? 80%? 99%? Can't tell. But it's interesting.

But I like the discussion. I find the notion that the pitcher has a negligible impact on the chance of a hit per ball put in play VERY hard to swallow.

This thread always derails. That's part of it's nature.

1 game less in the loss column than Tampa. All 5 teams are within 1 game.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Toronto Blue Jays are now in first place in the AL East

"Pitching through a dead arm" he says http://www.freep.com/article/20140409/SPORTS02/304090112/detroit-tigers-joe-nathan

Click on name, click on profile, click on add to ignore list. And voila!

Team's got CHEMISTRY. 2-3 WAR's worth.

My dad coached me, and I've coached my son at baseball. Coaches CONSTANTLY move the players around on the field. If a generally light hitting batter hits a well hit ball over the CF's head, that's the game.

Hmmmm...

The guys in the dugout generally decide how deep the outfielders should play.

That Rasmus has been bad defensively. He's had 2 bad throws. Otherwise good

Good job Lawrie Days of old he might waste a throw home there

Well put.

Please stop this Joke is old

f***. Morrow getting shelled.

Well that's just it. SP was crap. But BP is crap too.

Explain this pitching change Pitcher induces double play ground ball. Short stop's fault that runs score. Pitcher gets lifted??

Wow lucky

Why not?