Carlos Quentin
Just like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Quentin’s having some rather serious BABIP issues hitting just .207 on balls in play. Unfortunately if you’re trying to acquire Quentin, he has something else in common with Mark Teixeira and that’s power. Carlos Quentin’s 8 home-runs make him more difficult to pry away than your typical batter hitting .237 over the first month of the season.
Unlike Teixeira however, Carlos Quentin has actually managed to improve his line-drive rate and decrease his ground-ball rate. Quentin’s also striking out 4% less than he did last year, even if he’s regressed to his career-walk rate of 8%. In 2008, Quentin was an OPS-Monster as he drastically increased his BB-Rate nearly 5% from his previous years. The good news is that Carlos Quentin’s simply being more aggressive on pitches inside the zone. Quentin’s not chasing pitches outside of the zone, as his O-Swing’s remained around his career average of 26.5%. Quentin’s Z-Swing (swings at pitches inside of the zone) has risen almost 8 percent from last year, and he’s actually making slightly better contact on those pitches.
This is one of the better cases of using BABIP to evaluate a player’s luck. I was originally skeptical of Carlos Quentin maintaining a 20% Home Run per Fly Ball rate, but thus far he’s kept it up and I see no reason to believe it’ll drop below 16 or 17 percent. Quentin looks healthy, and I’d be buying fairly close to full-value. I don’t think Quentin ever comes close to replicating the non-counting stats of 2008, but he’s a spectacular player who’s finally cashing in on his potential. Update: Quentin apparently has hurt his foot and I have no clue as to how serious it is quite yet — if it’s not serious, now might be the perfect time to buy low.
Conor Jackson
Ouch, Jackson’s hitting .182 AVG on a .207 Batting Average On Balls In Play. Jackson has been hitting the ball hard for an 18% Line-Drive Rate, even if he’s getting under the ball for a 26.5% Infield Fly Ball Percentage. While I’m not seeing Jackson top .300, he should get close to batting .290 – .295 for the remainder of the season. Unfortunately we’re going to have to wait on Jackson, as he’s just been placed on the Disabled List. In deeper leagues, Jackson’s a terrific smash and grab target, as he’ll contribute across the board. While I’m not Conor Jackson flag-waver, he’ll contribute nicely if you’re stacked up with power-hitting middle infielders. Like….
Dan Uggla
Dan Uggla’s a powder keg of a second baseman. A Powder Keg that’s batting .189 on a .211 BABIP. Uggla hit .323 on balls in play last year, but expecting slight regression to the league average .300-range seems reasonable. You didn’t draft Uggla for his Batting Average though, you just assumed he’d post somewhere in the .250-.260 range and you’d eat it and offset it elsewhere. Unfortunately, Uggla’s been on a bit of a power-outage and has only hit 4 HR in 2009. If you were expecting a repeat of last year’s insane pace, think again. In 2008, Uggla was hitting 18.4% of his fly-balls for home-runs after consistently posting somewhere around 13%. This is how you one-up your HR total from the previous year in 100 less AB.
Given a full-season, Uggla should still top 25 home runs but he’ll have to go on a tear to top 30 for the third straight year. Luckily, when it comes to his other counting stats and batting average, all of them should increase with a bit of luck. Uggla’s actually increased his BB% which’ll make him pretty useful in leagues that use OBP rather than BA for the rest of the season. I’m not sure if Uggla’s value has dropped enough at this point to warrant recommending him as trade bait. Obviously, if the Uggla-Owner in your league looks at Uggla’s HR per AB, then he probably still believes Uggla will continue his ridiculous pace. If your Uggla-Owner just sees two straight 30-HR seasons, then I’d try and acquire the pop that Uggla brings to the MI position.
