"an old standard predictor of BABIP was LD/Balls In Play + .12
Which would mean for Colby this year his estimated BABIP should be around .395
going into today he was 1 for 9 on grounders, 4 for 8 on liners, 1 for 10 on fly balls (his HR)
Lets say that Rasmus was hitting the league average in each of these categories (GB .280, LD .740, FB .210) he'd have approximately 4 more hits on the season. Which puts him at .313 going into tonights game. So to say that he's been unlucky so far is probably very correct.
However does it mean success in Rasmus' future? Well he's not going to sustain a 29% LD rate all year (but hopefully the solid contact is a sign that he's heading back to the 19% LD hitter he once was). It's also not probable (possible?) that he keeps a 14% K-Rate either, while it's a positive sign, we will see more K's from him as the season goes along. I don't think he'll revert to the 27% he had in 2010 (and if he does he pretty much loses most of his value to us) but if he can settle in around 20% and reverts to near normalcy on his hit rates, we'd most like see him at .275ish. Now of course he better develop more power if he is going to sit at his current 5% walk rate.
In the end it's fun to play around with small sample size numbers like I have and you don't need stats to see that Colby is hitting the ball better than his numbers show and that his defense is improved over last year...however it does not guarantee that Rasmus returns to 4 WAR guy he was in 2010, the signs are encouraging but it's still early."
Nice post. I was more referring to the success we've seen so far not showing up in the stat sheet, and at an absurd level. My general point was that he's been actually very very good so far this year, and yet his statistics (standard ones) show that he's been a bad player.
Certainly it's not a prediction of future success, but I like his chances from what I've seen, I don't think anybody has hit the ball better on the jays so far this year, and there's varying stats among those guys.