Can Lawrie Keep It Up?

[Schad]

Whenever a player goes on a tear, the first question asked is often: is this sustainable? And, unfortunately, the answer is generally no...everything hit in the air is leaving the park. They're hitting .550 on balls in play. We've just finished a 25-game stretch of playing no one save the Blue Jays and their atrocious rotation (okay, that one comes up more rarely for us).

Which brings us to Brett Lawrie. Prior to tonight, he had 157 plate appearances since returning to the majors; it's not a massive sample, but it's not two weeks of good fortune, either. And in that sample, he has hit .308/.359/.490: can he keep that, or even a pale shade of that, up over the course of a full season?

Here's the comparison between the components of his post-return sample and three other groupings...his first portion of 2013 pre-injury, his 2011/2012 numbers combined, and his career totals:

Batting average on balls in play:

2011 + 2012 - .313
Pre-injury 2013 - .240
Post-injury 2013 - .312
Career total - .302


His return has tracked closely to his performance in his first two major league seasons; in 2011, he hit .318 on balls in play, and in 2012, he hit .311. The anomaly (which drops his career total rather significantly) appears to be his performance prior to the injury this season...a combination of bad luck and soft grounders to the left side of the infield drove down his BABIP, and consequently helped his average spent more time bouncing above and below Mendoza than a non-union Mexican porn star.

So, is this sustainable? It's not aberrant, certainly. But let's assume that the .240 stretch was a massive, cosmic correction, and the .302 (which is pretty much dead-on league-average) is what we can expect in the future. Apply that to his post-injury numbers and you can expect something like .298/.349/.477, otherwise known as an unadjusted OPS exactly 100 points above the AL average this season.

Thus, even if his batting average on balls in play is a shade high relative to the league average, even a slight regression there leaves you with a pretty damned good hitter.

There's another component to BABIP, though: batted ball splits. Pop everything up to the third baseman, you aren't likely to hit .300. Liners correlate closely to average on balls in play, so here be those averages:

2011 + 2012 - 19.3%
Pre-injury 2013 - 14.5%
Post-injury 2013 - 16.3%
Career total - 18.1%

So, his line drive rate is up relative to the early portion of the year, but it's still low relative to his career as a whole. And his infield fly rate remains on the high side (not calculated here, but clear in the splits), both relative to league norms and to his career...both signs (but not necessarily proof) that he may be getting a little lucky.

Operating from a base of 'everything about the Jays sucks, will always suck, and we suck for discussing them", let's then apply another arbitrary correction just to see how that'd affect things...this time, a fairly large one to establish what should be the worst-case within those parameters. The rule o' thumb is LD +.120; that'd be .283 post-injury, but let's round it down to .280 with the high IFFB%.

Now we end up with something in the range of .276/.327/.447, for an OPS of .774. So, yeah: not as good, but still rather good when intentionally aiming low to take all question of good fortune out of the equation.

And the reason why he has a high floor at current rates is pretty simple...he's not striking out.

2011 + 2012 - 16.5%.
Pre-injury 2013 - 23.5%.
Post-injury 2013 - 8.9%.
Career total - 16.4%.


That's a massive, massive drop, with a sample size large enough to be meaningful. And in (the somewhat smaller sample of) August, it's even more stark...including tonight, he has struck out less than 5% of the time.

Anything below 10% is elite; Jose Reyes, considered a very tough guy to whiff, sits at 10.3% career. Dustin Pedroia, on account of having a strike zone the size of a bagel, is one of the modern greats in that department...at 8.9% career, pretty much dead-on what Lawrie has managed since returning.

And that's the big number for Lawrie. The 5% ain't happening long-term; this is not 1903 and his given name has not been permanently supplanted by Hoss or Red or Lefty, which is particularly fortunate in the latter example. But 12%, 14%? Possible, and potentially very meaningful. Over 600 PAs, dropping his 16.5% career rate down to 14% would mean fifteen extra balls in play (unless one or two leaves the park), and that means roughly 4-5 extra hits. And 4-5 extra hits can mean 15-20 points on OPS, depending on where they go. It doesn't alone make a decent hitter a great one, but it can keep you on base with some regularity...something that, when combined with Lawrie's other capabilities, should keep you in the lineup, and in one of the meatier parts at that.

Speaking of which: what of his walk rate?

2011 + 2012 - 6.9%
Pre-injury 2013 - 5.9%
Post-injury 2013 - 6.4%
Career total - 6.7%

So, not much difference there, although his August numbers (prior to tonight's IBB) are even lower than usual, with a meager three walks in 97 plate appearances. Combined with his five strikeouts and two home runs, that means that Lawrie has put the ball in play a ridiculous 89.7% of the time; for the sake of comparison, Ichiro -- the Bizarro World answer to the Three True Outcomes -- has a career mark of 83.6%.

That's not sustainable...but the question remains as to which part is not sustained. If his strikeout rate rises a bit, but his walk rate moves in lockstep, no harm done. If his walk rate, strikeout rate and home run rate rise (and his HR/FB rate is pretty low in August), break out the party hats.

Is it just a question of pitchers throwing Lawrie a tonne of pitches in the zone, and him turning them around? Here are the number of pitches he's seeing per plate appearance:

2011 + 2012 - 3.75.
Pre-injury 2013 - 3.89.
Post-injury 2013 - 3.34.
Career total - 3.71.

That's a pretty stark difference. I can't easily find in-zone data for the time since his return, but that suggests more pitches being around the zone, and a much more aggressive approach. But even then, it indicates a hitter who isn't missing when something worth hitting is offered...Lawrie has always been an aggressive hitter (no Vlad Guerrero by any means, but not the sort to take a pitch on the corner in the hopes that the next will be down the middle, either), but in his down days tends to foul off stuff in the zone before chopping something a tad tougher into the infield grass. Now, they're getting hit hard, and hit fair.


After that dissertation-length meandering, can he keep it up? There are a lot of parts moving away from his career norms here, both for good and bad. But there are no major statistical quirks: it very much looks like an aggressive hitter making good contact, so there's no shoe to drop in terms of the numbers. If there's a reckoning, it will come because pitchers have succeeded in exploiting his tendencies. If there isn't, if Lawrie adjusts as they adjusts, there's nothing in the numbers to suggest that he cannot continue to hit very well.

[Fairview4Life]

Yes.

[satyr9]

He can, but that pitch count number scares me a bit. Lawrie is obviously not short on talent, there's a reason we took this two-month audition a little too seriously. That being said, I think post-injury he's getting challenged and he's succeeding, but that's not gonna last much longer, the challenging part anyway. Can he keep it up once the pitchers and staffs out there identify his weakness and attack it? If he shows adjustments and continued success, then I'll start to think we're in for extended good things with his bat. Until then, I'm expecting a bit of a Colby ride with Lawrie the next couple years honestly. He'll get hot and torch the league for a while, but he won't handle the struggles well. I hope I'm wrong.

[Raps_Swingman]

I've repeatedly asked for his mechanics to quiet down, the constant waggling around changed his swing plane game to game. He is finally looking like a guy who is starting to get it. He is effin awesome to watch play 3rd base on top of that.

I think he's a .275-.290 /.800 OPS guy. His approach looks so far advanced to earlier in the year when I think most of us agreed he was rushed back and was 2 steps behind.

The development of Colby and Lawrie have been bright spots in a lost season.

[Lateral Quicks]

It's great that he's finally making the necessary adjustments to quiet things down at the plate. He's got really good bat speed, and now that he's removed much of that extraneous twitchiness he can use it to better effect. But really, did they have to give him JPK's stance? Gah!!!!

[J-Roc]

I haven't watched a game since he got good, but I'll be at the a Dome tonight. You guys are saying he's slowed down at the plate. Has he really, or we think he has because he's getting hits?

Sent using the RealGM mobile app.

[BigLeagueChew]

I haven't watched a game since he got good, but I'll be at the a Dome tonight. You guys are saying he's slowed down at the plate. Has he really, or we think he has because he's getting hits?

Sent using the RealGM mobile app.

Yes his hands have slowed down and he's not moving his front foot as much. It's giving him the chance to cover the outside pitch much better and take some hits to right field.

[J-Roc]

I haven't watched a game since he got good, but I'll be at the a Dome tonight. You guys are saying he's slowed down at the plate. Has he really, or we think he has because he's getting hits?

Sent using the RealGM mobile app.

Yes his hands have slowed down and he's not moving his front foot as much. It's giving him the chance to cover the outside pitch much better and take some hits to right field.

Who suggested the change? Or was it his idea?

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4

[BigLeagueChew]

Who suggested the change? Or was it his idea?

Edwin helped him with his hands I think, the front foot I'm not sure about, possibly Mottola and Edwin again. Have to give Lawrie some credit though, the change in approach is up to him.