3 Ball...GOT IT
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What Austin Jackson has done this year is really remarkable, having an offensive year like this this late into his career. I wanted to see what he's been doing differently between this year and the recent past, and there are two primary differences.
The first being his patience. I know I've heard about this on broadcasts earlier in the year. He has a 10.1% BB rate this season, his second highest mark in 8 seasons in the majors. (Fun fact, Carlos Carrasco leads the Indians in walk rate this year at 20%, one walk in 5 PAs... Michael Martinez is third). Even more important, is Jackson's hitting with 2 strikes this year. According to STATS, Jackson is hitting .257 with 2 strikes (37 for 144), good for 6th in the AL.
But the other primary difference is his launch angle. There's been a lot of talk about this in the MLB this year, as a ton of guys are raising their launch angle to get the ball in the air more and hoping to hit more home runs. But Jackson's on the other end of the spectrum. Here's his launch angle Statcast breakdowns on hits over the last 3 seasons:
From left to right: 2015 (.267 AVG), 2016 (.254 AVG), 2017 (.306 AVG)
Obviously the 2017 breakdown is the outlier, as Jackson is getting a ton more hits on balls around 0 degree launch angle. This simply means he's getting a ton more ground ball base hits this year. Whether or not this is on purpose, we don't know, but it's one of the lone outliers of this season vs his others.
Even his exit velocity numbers are nothing out of the ordinary this season, and he has the lowest line-drive percentage since 2011.
So with this info, you'd expect his BABIP to be at a career high in order to maintain .300+ average, and it is:
BABIP 2015: .342
BABIP 2016: .319
BABIP 2017: .370
Another minor area that reflects this change is GIDP's. This stat has a ton of variance, but this is interesting: only Edwin Encarnacion (18) has grounded into more double plays this season than Jackson (12). And that's in well over double the plate appearances for Edwin.
I keep waiting for Jackson's numbers to fall off some, but they just won't. He had 3 ground-ball hits tonight that prompted me to make this post lol.
The first being his patience. I know I've heard about this on broadcasts earlier in the year. He has a 10.1% BB rate this season, his second highest mark in 8 seasons in the majors. (Fun fact, Carlos Carrasco leads the Indians in walk rate this year at 20%, one walk in 5 PAs... Michael Martinez is third). Even more important, is Jackson's hitting with 2 strikes this year. According to STATS, Jackson is hitting .257 with 2 strikes (37 for 144), good for 6th in the AL.
But the other primary difference is his launch angle. There's been a lot of talk about this in the MLB this year, as a ton of guys are raising their launch angle to get the ball in the air more and hoping to hit more home runs. But Jackson's on the other end of the spectrum. Here's his launch angle Statcast breakdowns on hits over the last 3 seasons:
From left to right: 2015 (.267 AVG), 2016 (.254 AVG), 2017 (.306 AVG)
Obviously the 2017 breakdown is the outlier, as Jackson is getting a ton more hits on balls around 0 degree launch angle. This simply means he's getting a ton more ground ball base hits this year. Whether or not this is on purpose, we don't know, but it's one of the lone outliers of this season vs his others.
Even his exit velocity numbers are nothing out of the ordinary this season, and he has the lowest line-drive percentage since 2011.
So with this info, you'd expect his BABIP to be at a career high in order to maintain .300+ average, and it is:
BABIP 2015: .342
BABIP 2016: .319
BABIP 2017: .370
Another minor area that reflects this change is GIDP's. This stat has a ton of variance, but this is interesting: only Edwin Encarnacion (18) has grounded into more double plays this season than Jackson (12). And that's in well over double the plate appearances for Edwin.
I keep waiting for Jackson's numbers to fall off some, but they just won't. He had 3 ground-ball hits tonight that prompted me to make this post lol.
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