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[tag]Tampa Bay Devil Rays[/tag] second baseman, [tag]B.J. Upton[/tag] is enjoying an incredible start to the 2007 season. He’s hitting .370/.427/.667 with 5 home runs, 5 stolen bases and 20 runs batted in. However, by looking at a couple of [tag]batted ball statistics[/tag] I have come to the conclusion the Upton may be overachieving.
The first stat that scares me is his BABIP (Batting Average for Balls In Play). Basically, BABIP shows the percentage of every ball a batter hits in fair territory (minus home runs) that falls for a hit. It tells us how “lucky” a hitter is getting. The average BABIP is around .290. Upton’s BABIP is .532. That means that something close to 54% of the balls that are falling for hits for him right now, shouldn’t be. Let that number sink in for a minute…54%.
Another number that scares me is his contact rate. 90% is a contact rate you see in most .300 hitters. Upton’s contact rate is 64.19%. This tells me that Upton doesn’t make contact with the ball like a .300 hitter does. It’s his high BABIP that is keeping him afloat right now. What’s going to happen if his contact rate stays at 64% and his BABIP corrects itself back down to .290?
I’m not telling you to jump off the Upton bandwagon and don’t jump ship right now. But you may want to consider trading him while his value is very high. If you don’t want to trade him or if a trade isn’t available, you may want to come up with a contingency plan to put into place when Upton’s numbers start going down.
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