David Wright has broken BABIP

While David Wright has lost his power as well as the rest of the Mets. The team SLG has gone from .432 and .420 respectively in 2007 and 2008 to .405 in 2009. The team ISO has also dropped 30 points since last year. The new stadium is truly becoming a pitchers park as the teams pitchers have seen their HR/FB against go from 10.8% in 2008 to 8.2% in 2009.

What has been interesting with Wright's power loss is the jump in batting average this year. He has always been a very good hitter with his only average below .300 came in his first season batting .293. This year though with only 4 homers his average has jumped to .356 so far.

Without those homers to help his average you would have to expect that his BABIP has jumped to help him still hold a better average. It would either be that or a huge improvement in contact rate, but his contact rate has actually dropped from his career level of 83.5% to 80% in 2009. He is now striking out 26.5% of the time when his career rate is 19.5%.

Currently David Wright holds a .469 BABIP in 264 ABs. The next closest batter is Justin Upton with a BABIP of .389. That is an 80 point change in BABIP from first to second. This cannot be explained by a skill, but an extreme amount of luck. No batter in the past 4 years has finished a full season with a BABIP over .400.

It is very likely that Wright does just this in 2009. His career BABIP is .352 and if he has a BABIP around that for the remainder of 2009 his final line would still hold a BABIP over .400 for the year. It's a shame Wright suffered the power outage and the strikeout rate as we could be looking at a potential .400 season based on the excessive luck, but he will not have the chance to reach that without 30-40 homers and a 19% strikeout rate.