with a little more power they would’ve been solid shots to the wall for an easy 2B, but they lacked the muscle to get past the gap, so they were essentially an easy out.

it was the pitches he wasn’t hitting that his swing just looked very bad, like he had no idea what pitch was being thrown even after he had started his swing.

but i’m guessing if i started talking about standard deviation and the wonders of math-a-magics (i have a degree in math, just so you know), then your gut would probably tell you that i don’t know what i’m talking about.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2596

Sure, OPS isn’t the BEST stat, but it’s heads above BA and not that much worse than EqA.

Go ahead and look at his OBP with RISP. For his career, he is at .325… which is respectably average. This season he is at .277. That’s 50 points lower than his career totals, which is a significant jump.

Why do i say it’s luck? His BABIP is a tiny .164. Part of that is that he’s hit his share of weak ground balls. A lot of that is luck.

If this injury isn’t bad enough to effect his long-term performance, he will regress back to being complete average, just like he always has been.

lugo has a very low slugging percentage, meaning he hits a lot of singles.

But he’s also almost exactly at the league (that means AL only) average for shortstops, and his OPS+ for the season so far is 82, which isn’t THAT far below the league average for any position…. it’s low, but not omar vizquel low.

Also, no stat tells you about clutch hitting (except the “clutch” number, which the jury is still out on) until you look at his splits, which (if you check the post above), reveal that he’s been pretty unlucky.

He’s had a few at bats recently where he’s whiffed or made weak contact, but do you remember the streak he had about a month ago where for about a weak straight he hit HARD line drives at the infielders? That’s the kind of streak that will lower your BABIP and cause you to appear terrible, when in fact you’re just unlucky.