(*) MASTER NOTES: Rating BA outliers

As we hit the one-third mark in the 2014 schedule, we’ve seen extraordinary performances—some players doing way better than we expected, others doing far worse.

In this edition of Master Notes, I’ll take you on a quick walk through the basic analysis I use to get a start on sorting out outlier performances that might be real from outlier performances that are not.

In the interest of space, I’ll just look at the Batting Average category.

The first thing I want to do is identify the outliers. So I find every batter with 50+ AB this year, and at least 200 AB in both 2011 and 2012. I set AB minimums because I can’t trust baselines otherwise.

That first step leaves me with 205 hitters. Of them, 14 have BAs 50 points or more higher than their BAs of the last two years—and three players 100 points or more above their baselines!

Player          Tm  Pos    ’14  12-13    Diff
=============================================
Norris,Derek   OAK    2   .343   .226   +.117
Stubbs,Drew    COL   OF   .330   .222   +.108
Weeks,Rickie   MIL    4   .323   .222   +.101
Smith,Seth      SD   OF   .339   .246   +.093
Suzuki,Ichiro  NYY   OF   .359   .273   +.086
Suzuki,Kurt    MIN    2   .303   .234   +.069
Wieters,Matt   BAL    2   .308   .242   +.066
LaRoche,Adam   WAS    3   .319   .255   +.064
Hundley,Nick    SD    2   .268   .206   +.062
Utley,Chase    PHI    4   .333   .273   +.060
Morneau,Justin COL    3   .321   .263   +.058
Cain,Lorenzo    KC   OF   .311   .256   +.055
Kinsler,Ian    DET    4   .317   .266   +.051
Davis,Ike      PIT    3   .269   .219   +.050

Some interesting names, and it might be tempting to rush out and try to trade for one of these batters or snag him out of the free-agent pool.

But at BaseballHQ.com, we always want to assess the why of the performance, and specifically to check if any big gain is driven by some improvement in skills, or if it is more about a change in luck.

Look for example at the top name on the list, Oakland C Derek Norris, hitting .343 this year, 117 points ahead of his combined .226 BA in 2012-13.

The first thing I look at for BA outliers is Expected BA, or xBA, an HQ metric that combines several aspects of BA production into a single value we can compare directly to actual performance.

In this case, Norris’ xBA is .294, an indication that his .343 current BA is not entirely supported by his underlying skills.

One of the components of xBA is contact rate, the percentage of ABs in which the batter doesn’t strike out. Contact rate is a reliable core metric for most offensive success, and Norris has raised his from 68% in 2012 to 73% last year to 87% so far this year. Anything over 80% is good, and approaching 90% is terrific, so Norris’ ct%—and its growth—are very positive signs.

I also check Norris’ Hard Contact Index (HctX), which measures how often he has hit the ball hard this year. Norris’ 109 is another positive sign, especially coming after two years slightly under the league average of 100.

So far, pretty good for Derek Norris. But I also want to look at hit rate, or BA on Balls in Play (you will often hear it called “BABIP” as an acronym). Norris’ hit rate this season is 37%, well ahead of his 30% mark last year and 26% in 2012. That usually indicates a player has enjoyed some hitter’s luck, with a few dunkers dropping in for hits, and a few grounders sneaking through the infield. We expect luck to even out.

But we have to acknowledge Norris is also hitting the ball harder and more often than in those last two years, so there is very likely more to his hit rate gain than just luck alone.

Overall, I’d be optimistic that Norris will continue to be a BA contributor. Again, I don’t expect him to be at .345 for the full season, especially since he’s a catcher. Wear and tear behind the plate wears a guy out.

(For a really complete analysis, I’d also look for changes in GB-LD-FB percentages. And if I were looking at HR outliers, I’d change the performance to a rate, like HR per 500 AB, then analyze using FB% and HctX.)

For contrast, let’s look at Rickie Weeks of MIL, who is hitting .323, 101 points up on his last two seasons.

I see plenty of cause for concern:

• His xBA is only .257
• His ct% is still under 80%
• His HctX is actually lower than the last two years
• And his hit rate is up more than 12 percentage points over last year—and unlike Norris, Weeks’ skills don’t explain the hit rate gain.

I’d be very worried about Weeks’ capacity to maintain an elite BA.

Other BA overperformers I’d be cautious about include:

• Lorenzo Cain of KC (his ct% has snuck up past 80%, but HctX is way off)
• Ichiro Suzuki of NYY (his hit rate is 45%, 16 points higher than last year, and his ct%, which was elite in his salad days, is now around 80%)
• And Adam LaRoche of WAS (his skills are the same as the last couple of years, his ct% is still below 80%, and his hit rate is nonetheless up nine points from last year)

Besides Norris, batters whose BA overperformance looks supportable include:

• Kurt Suzuki (his hit rate is up but only into the normal 30% range, and he has elite ct% this year and an above-average HctX this year as well as in 2012-13)
• And Justin Morneau (ct% up to 88%, HctX back into the 120s)

I also looked at these BA outliers for the underperformers, and while there’s no space to discuss that analysis in detail, look for some bounceback from Adrián Béltre, José Reyes and Joey Votto (assuming his knee is not causing trouble).

As for the rest, well, there’s an expression that says, “Caveat emptor,” which goes back to when they played fantasy baseball in ancient Rome. It means, “let the buyer beware,” and I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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