Reynolds Redux

Written by Bill

Friday, 25 September 2009 09:00

Somehow, Rob Neyer made his way to this little site, which is thrilling in and of itself, and wrote a whole post about yesterday's post on Mark Reynolds and strikeouts, which is even better.

And he disagreed with me, which is cool. Everything Rob says is very fair, and I actually agree with most of it. It was buried a bit in yesterday's post, so let me be clear: Mark Reynolds is one of my favorite players. Mark Reynolds and I share an alma mater, sort of. I root for Mark Reynolds. And I'm certainly not anti-high-strikeout guys. I just think that, as he goes on, he's really unlikely to repeat his .900+ OPS performance if he doesn't cut down on the strikeouts just a little bit. And I still think that, and here are some reasons why...after the jump.

First, the one point on which I disagree outright with Rob is where he says "we have plenty of data," referring to Reynolds' batting average on balls in play (unless he means we have plenty of data to refute my contention that most hitters hover around a .300 BABIP, which is absolutely true and was simply a lazy oversimplification on my part -- the average is around .300, but that doesn't mean that hitters, like pitchers, are doomed to gravitate back toward .300. They're not.). Rob points out that Reynolds has a .345 BABIP in 1450 AB (FanGraphs actually says .351). But that's based on the following:

A crazy .386 BABIP in 366 AB in 2007
A .329 BABIP in 539 AB in 2008
A .347 BABIP in 545 AB this season...which is the one we're trying to figure out.

If the question is whether Reynolds' season is fluky, and nearly 40% of Reynolds' career at-bats come from this season, I don't think his career BABIP is a terribly useful indicator. Also, should we consider his minor league batting record too (I calculate a .329 BABIP, in 1216 AB, against at least theoretically inferior defenses)?

Second (relatedly, but sort of a second point), I know there are standard errors and all that, but I'm really hesitant to draw any conclusions from BABIP after 2 1/2 measly seasons. After Ryan Howard's first 932 AB (through 2006), he had approximately a .362 BABIP: since then, he's gone .336, .289, .320 (according to FanGraphs -- why are BBREF's numbers so much lower?) in 1717 AB, and lowered his career BABIP to .331. Adam Dunn's career BABIP is .296 (and incidentally, his career line drive, groundball and flyball percentages look pretty similar to Reynolds'), and over his last five years he's gone .281, .278, .309, .262, .342. I don't think you could pick a 1450-AB sample out of that and determine what kind of "BABIP hitter" Dunn really is.

Third, look at this list of the highest-career-BABIP hitters of all time. Do any of them remind you of Reynolds? They're all great hitters, but that's not what I mean. Aside from Miguel Cabrera and the incomparable Rogers Hornsby, there's not a real home run hitter in the group. And Miggy's batted ball profile is very different from Reynolds' -- more line drives and many fewer fly balls. The guys on the high-BABIP list are all line-drive hitters. The lowest BABIPs ever (scroll down the page a bit) are...well, they're all well retired, but the ones I'm familiar with were flyball hitters. Nettles, Evans, Stormin' Gorman, and so forth.

Reynolds isn't those guys, but it seems to me he's got at least as much in common with those guys as he does with Gwynn, Boggs and Clemente. Let me stress again that these guys' BABIPs aren't high because they're great hitters, they're high because they're a certain type of great hitter. Albert Pujols' career BABIP is .322; Barry Bonds', .288; Willie Mays, .302. Joe Mauer's at .342, while Morneau is at .293. Isn't there a kind of a pattern here? It's no knock against Reynolds' to say he's not a .350- or maybe even a .330-BABIP hitter: it's just that the way he hits the ball is a lot like Morneau or Dunn, and not much at all like Mauer or Gwynn.

Finally, Rob points out that the big question is with Reynolds' HR/FB rate -- he's hit it out 27% of the time he's put it in the air this year, up from 18% a year ago -- and whether he can maintain that or has just gotten lucky. I wrote about that the last time I wrote up Reynolds, and he's certainly right that it's a bigger concern than the BABIP. Six weeks ago, I didn't think there was any way Reynolds could keep hitting them out at that rate, long-term, but Rob provides some good reasons to believe he might. If he does, he's a very, very good player. I think you've got to bet on a little bit of a dropoff, anyway.

This is a lot of words for a relatively minor point. Reynolds had near-MVP-quality numbers through August 10: .298/.378/.610. And he'd struck out 150 times, in 2/3 of the season, and put up a BABIP of .371. That's not the kind of thing one can sustain, and sustain he didn't, crashing down to his current level of .266/.356/.559. Still solid (though it should be said that he plays in a very generous hitting environment, and a 131 OPS+ that includes a just-slightly-better-than-average OBP isn't exactly setting the world on fire for a mediocre defensive 3B), but, for the reasons outlined above, I continue to think he's pretty lucky even to be there.