Each Thursday we will be covering different statistics that have very strong uses for fantasy. They are not stats that get used for ranking, but they can greatly effect your team. Some we already use on this site and others we will discuss if they can be used for our analysis.
LD%
Line Drive percentage (LD%) is a great stat for both pitchers and hitters. We can address the skill of both the pitcher and hitter by looking into their LD%, and this then effects their xBABIP(expected Batting Average on Balls In Play). LD% is just the simple calculation: line drives/batted balls=LD% . Some question has been raised about how this stat is collected, and it seems that some stadiums inflate LD% while others depress them. This could be a factor of the park, but it is also likely a factor of who is scoring the game. Here is an interesting look by Brian Cartwright at FanGraphs.com.
Hitters
Hitters have a lot of control over their LD% and can maintain higher rates or fall to lower rates. There is a lot of fluctuation, though, and one year to the next can go from good to bad. The league average is 18%, and batting better than that will improve a hitter's chance to get more hits. Hitting below will reduce their chance to get on.
Some examples of career hitters over 20% LD%: David Wright, Chase Utley and Manny Ramirez. There are many more that gain an advantage by hitting for an increased LD%. On the other hand, it's difficult to find players who hit lower than 17% over their career. The majority of hitters are in the 17-19% range.
xBABIP is calculated from this statistic by adding .120 to the LD%, and the resulting number is a league average of .300. This is being perfected, but it still serves as a good rough estimate. Identifying guys who hit the ball well and maintain higher LD% will ensure you draft talent who can beat a higher strikeout rate.
Pitchers
Pitchers have much less control over this, and it is very variable from year to year. This becomes much more of a stat you can use to see how much of a pitcher's past was luck. You shouldn't expect a pitcher who has thrown to a 22%LD rate to continue at that rate. You should actually expect it to decline as he faces more hitters and reaches the league average.
If Jake Peavy faced a guy like Manny Ramirez for 500 AB's his BABIP would be around Manny's career BABIP of .344. This doesn't take into account park and defense factors though, which can effect BABIP.
If we look at Josh Beckett he had a LD% of 25.2% in 2008, but has a career average at 19.6% which is near the league average. This also gave him a BABIP of .327 and allowed an estimated 30 base runners. If he continued to allow 72%(his average and league average) of these runners to score he gives up an extra 21 runs. This is why Beckett had a FIP of 3.24, but a final ERA of 4.03.
Conclusion
Without LD% and an xBABIP it would be much harder to project a AVG for hitters. A hitter who only K's 10% of the time should have a very good average, but if his LD% is poor and he hits a BABIP under .300 he could struggle to maintain a .300 AVG.
Pitchers are more of a stat for review than projection. You can truly find a pitchers value and talent. Combined with BABIP and LOB% you can also see what caused them to miss their FIP. This will help identify pitcher like Josh Beckett or others who had some bad luck with line drives and should have better success in the next season.
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