Bad Luck, Soft Contact, or Target?

I noticed something while looking at fangraphs today and saw that the majority of Cubs players are experiencing years where their BABIP is well below league average.

This typically means bad luck or soft contact.

But... Could it possibly be the fact that being WS champs other teams pitchers are targeting them?

Targeting them for what? A win?

brett05 said:

Targeting them for what? A win?

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I believe it was Ron Coomer who mentioned this. But he said that teams that win the world series face a tougher road the following year because opposing teams tend to focus more and play better against the WS champs. That is the target part. He said other teams tend to play them as if it is a playoff type atmosphere. This could explain why the teams BABIP is much lower than last year. It can't be bad luck because it is a team epidemic, and it probably isn't soft contact as that would also be a team epidemic, which would just seem almost impossible.

For reference sake last years BABIP was .302, this year it is .287, ranked 25th in the league.

Last year their soft contact was actually higher. So we can eliminate soft contact as an issue.

BABIP can be effected by other teams playing better in the field, or positioning is suddenly better.

JP Hochbaum said:

I believe it was Ron Coomer who mentioned this. But he said that teams that win the world series face a tougher road the following year because opposing teams tend to focus more and play better against the WS champs. That is the target part. He said other teams tend to play them as if it is a playoff type atmosphere. This could explain why the teams BABIP is much lower than last year. It can't be bad luck because it is a team epidemic, and it probably isn't soft contact as that would also be a team epidemic, which would just seem almost impossible.

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I don't buy that theory much...

I would hope every team/pitcher every year plays every team hard for a win..

I'd hate to think I have a SP on the mound who only gets xtra motivated when they face a playoff contender or a defending champion ..

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chibears55 said:

I don't buy that theory much...

I would hope every team/pitcher every year plays every team hard for a win..

I'd hate to think I have a SP on the mound who only gets xtra motivated when they face a playoff contender or a defending champion ..

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Well from what Coomer said is that this does happen. Not every game, but enough times to where it can show up in the stats like it has.

And we do see starting pitchers pitch on another level in the playoffs. They tend to have two gears: regular season and playoffs.

JP Hochbaum said:

Well from what Coomer said is that this does happen. Not every game, but enough times to where it can show up in the stats like it has.

And we do see starting pitchers pitch on another level in the playoffs. They tend to have two gears: regular season and playoffs.

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Playoff games are another story, I can see players getting extra pumped for that situation, it a win or go home situation ...

I just don't buy joe schmo getting extra motivated pitching against the cubs over another team just because the Cubs won the world series..

Joe Schmo needs to be motivated to pitch against every team for his own and team success...



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JP,
To test your theory you should go back the last 25-50 years of WS champs and compare their two seasons BABIP.

Cubs BABIP's really aren't that abnormal. There's 3 guys in particular I'd call oddly low and that's Zobrist(.241), Rizzo(.252) and Schwarber(.227). Heyward at .284 is a little low but it's not super significant. Bryant is above .300 but possibly low for him given his career rate is .341 and his rate this year is .313. But the thing is you then have guys like Jay who is at .372. So it happens.

As for the "why" on Zobrist, Rizzo and Schwarber 2 of the 3 should be fairly obvious. Schwarber and Rizzo are lefty power bats that almost exclusively see shifts. Schwarber's numbers are likely a bit skewed as well given he wasn't hitting well prior to june. Since july 6th Schwarber's BABIP is .341 and he's hitting .256/.341/.564 over 88 PAs. If you take that back to the start of june it's .279 BABIP and .234/.336/.548. I think you could argue the difference between him today and him in June was some slight luck variance given his power and on base are roughly equivalent but the hits were slightly lower. On Rizzo, even at .252 BABIP he's really not that far off his career numbers(.285). It's low but not enormously low.

Zobrist is more flukey. He's a career .289 BABIP guy. I'd have to dig in more to get a full picture of what's going on. His power is also down which is weird because his soft contact rate is down from last year(15.4% last year to 13.8% this year) and his hard contact rate is up from last year(32.5% vs 33.3%). His line drive rate is down and his ground ball rate is up. I'm sure there's something there but i'd want to look more into it than the 3-4 mins i just did.

Random variance is a bitch.