We come to the end of our little odyssey through the world of batted ball types. Today we'll look at the final four major contributors to the A's roster last season, and I'll hand out my First Annual Batted Ball Awards (including the Jack Cust Contact Quality Award-- I bet nobody can guess who's winning that one). First, though, it's time to review our glossary of terms and our league medians. If you've read parts one and two, skip ahead to the Donnie Murphy section.

My apologies for how long it took me to post this; thanks to spending Christmas day with a bunch of small gremlins, I came down with a cold and didn't have the energy to finish working on it.

Glossary

Basic breakdown: What kinds of balls are guys hitting? LD is Line Drive percentage. (Very, very good.) GB is ground ball percentage. (Bad, unless you're Ichiro or Maurice Greene.) OFB is outfield fly ball percentage. (Usually about average, but very bad if you're Juan Pierre or Reggie Willits.) IFB is infield fly ball percentage. (Very, very bad. These are almost always pop-ups or foul-outs.)

Results: What happens to the balls when they land? HR/FB is the percentage of fly balls which are home runs. (Most non-homer fly balls end up being outs, so this tells you a lot about whether a guy is benefiting or hurting his team by hitting flies.) BABIP is Batting Average on Balls in Play. (It's a key component of a player's batting average.) OCSlg is Slugging Percentage On Contact. (When a guy actually hits a ball, how hard does he hit it? If anyone's wondering, the difference between "In Play" and "On Contact" is that the latter includes home runs and the former doesn't.)

League Medians (Among Qualified Players)

Line Drive: 18.8%
Ground Ball: 42.0%
Outfield Fly Balls: 35.0%
Infield Fly Balls: 3.9%

Home Runs per Fly Ball: 10.0%
BABIP: .312

I don't know what the median is for OCSlg, because I calculated that by hand. I seem to recall working out that league average was about .520 not too long ago, however.

One thing I don't think I've mentioned before-- league medians actually overstate some stats. In particular, HR/FB -- a lot of bench scrubs are terrible power hitters. They get a few at-bats here and there-- enough to pull down the average but not enough to actually qualify for the batting title. Unless they're Nick Punto, that is. (Someone explain Nick Punto to me. Please.) Keep it in mind when you're comparing hitters to the baseline figures.

Donnie Murphy

LD 19.3% (22.1%)
GB 34.9% (35.9%)
OFB 43.4% (38.2%)
IFB 2.4% (3.8%)

HR/FB 15.8% (5.4%)
BABIP .260 (.414)
OCSlg .626 (.679)

(Minors stats again in italics.)

If Dave Kingman played short, is this what he would look like?

We've got some contradictory data sets for Murphy's 2007. On the one hand, he hit like your typical shortstop in AAA-- high average, good contact, not much power. On the other hand, once he was called up to MLB, he started swinging for the fences. Not all that uncommon, except that in Murphy's case, he actually reached the fences. Whatever he was doing at the major league level, it seems to have worked. He goes into 2007 as (gulp) the probable best hitter at the shortstop position for Oakland.

I think he's going to have to tone down the homeruncentricity a bit, though. The key question is whether he can bring his other batted ball stats, particularly his BABIP, up as his HR/FB drops. He's not going to BABIP .414 at the major league level, that's for sure. But my spider sense (and his 5-foot-10 frame) tells me that he's not going to jack 15% of his fly balls, either. Hit a happy medium, around .320/10%, and he should claim the starting shortstop job from Bobby Crosby with ease.

Shannon Stewart

LD 21.4%
GB 44.5%
OFB 31.5%
IFB 2.6%

HR/FB 6.8%
BABIP .308
OCSlg .440

One of the interesting remaining decisions that the A's need to make this offseason is whether to resign Shannon Stewart. I know everyone's first thought-- what on earth do the A's need with another corner outfielder? Obviously, a re-sign would not be for purposes of improving the team. What it would do, though, is give the team some control over a commodity which could later be used as trade bait.

Then again, limp-wristed (and noodle-armed) left fielders are not exactly in the highest of demand. Stewart's spread of 132 points between his BABIP and OCSlg is pretty miserable. It's nice to be able to "put it where they ain't," but it would be nicer if it was far enough away from where they "is" to enable him to get to second base.

Stewart's batted ball numbers recentered on his career marks this last season; his liners were way down in his injury-riddled 2006 but popped back up in 2007. I think it's pretty safe to say that the guy we saw last year is the same guy that whoever signs him will be getting in 2008.

Right now I'm inclined toward letting him walk and taking the comp pick, but you never know who might find themselves needing a .750 OPS from an outfielder. Certainly if he's still unsigned by the time compensation picks expire (anyone know when that might be?) I'd offer him either 1/$5M or 2/$7M. It's only money, after all.

Kurt Suzuki

LD 15.9% (20.1%)
GB 39.2% (47.9%)
OFB 42.1% (26.0%)
IFB 2.8% (5.9%)

HR/FB 8.9% (6.8%)
BABIP .275 (.337)
OCSlg .500 (.452)

Bad news for Kurt Klutch fans-- these numbers predict a regression next year. Or, to put a slightly more optimistic spin on things, Suzuki is going to have to improve to stay the same (does that make sense?). His line drive rate at the major league level was troublingly low, and he didn't hit for a lot of power at AAA.

There are some encouraging signs here, but overall very few of Suzuki's offensive numbers are above average. Suzuki is still pretty young, especially for a collegian, so he has some time to work on squaring pitches up. With his fairly small frame, I doubt he'll be a dominant power threat (although he showed flashes of very good power last season), so the most important thing for Suzuki is to work on upping that line drive count toward where it was in AAA. If he can do that and play quality defense at catcher, he'll be a more than adequate solution at the position, even if he's not likely to hit higher than 7th in the order.

Nick Swisher

LD 17.5%
GB 36.9%
OFB 41.3%
IFB 4.3%

HR/FB 11.6%
BABIP .308
OCSlg .600

A puzzling season for Nick Swisher. Despite more or less maintaining his batted-ball ratios (his liners did drop a little, but not very much) and actually increasing his batting average by about 10 points, his slugging percentage dropped like a weighted rock.

His HR/FB ratio dropped by over 1/3, from 17.9% to 11.6%. More than anything else, this explains his struggles at the plate at times this year. Balls which were leaving the yard in 2006 were getting caught for loud outs in 2007. It's possible that a portion of this was injury-related; he had some hamstring issues and at times looked noticeably hobbled at the plate. But that can't be the full story.

My personal theory is that Swish was simply trying too hard. Baseball is not a game where throwing every ounce of effort into your swing is likely to produce a desired result. Some combination of Bradley's injuries and subsequent trade, and his big new contract, seems to have caused Swisher to start pressing. From about the last week of May to the All-Star break, he was stone cold terrible.

How does this translate into the numbers we see above? Well, if he was swinging under balls to try to loft them for home runs, perhaps that caused his home run numbers to perversely decline as he hit more high cans of corn to the outfielders. Looking at the chart of his fly ball rates over the entire season, his flies stayed fairly close to his season rate during the midseason slump-- but none of them were leaving the park.

It is, as they say, just a theory-- but I think the evidence supports it somewhat.

The Groundies

Yes, it's time to hand out the awards for best and worst performance in each category. Again, let me emphasize that grounders and flies don't exist in a stable relationship with each other. Some guys do great hitting lots of grounders; others need to lift the ball for success. If there's one thing I hope we've all learned from this process, it's that there are many ways to succeed at hitting-- and the most important person in the process is the hitter himself. To badly paraphrase Sun Tzu, know yourself and the enemy and you will OPS .900; know one but not the other and you will be average; know neither and you will OPS .600.

Now, the awards (and vaguely topical/amusing commentary about them):

Tony Gwynn Frozen Rope Award (Best LD%): Jack Hannahan

Daric Barton just misses out on this one, because his LD% in the minors was "only" 21.2%.

Tennessee Women's Softball Team Slap-Hitting Award (Worst LD%): Kurt Suzuki

Did you know that there are entire instruction manuals written about the art of slap-hitting in softball? Apparently the key is to start running forward before the pitch even reaches the plate.

Frank Thomas Thank God I Hit Fly Balls All The Time Because I Couldn't Beat Out a Grounder if My Life Depended On It Award (Highest OFB%/Lowest GB%): Mark Ellis

Frank Thomas has hit over 50% fly balls in every full season that he's played since people started keeping track of this stuff-- and a good thing, too.

Reggie Willits I Can't Hit the Ball More Than Ten Feet In The Air Award (Lowest OFB%/Highest GB%): Bobby Crosby

How does Reggie Willits lead a team in pitches per plate appearance? Can't the pitchers just throw heat high in the strike zone? Why would you ever throw a pitch that WASN'T a strike to Reggie Willits?

Meineke Car Care Clutch Award (Lowest IFB%): Jack Cust

Hey, if all the bowl games can sell off their naming rights, why can't I?

Oh, right. I didn't get a cent for this.

Fuck you, Meineke.

Robby Thompson I Wish I Was Playing in Old Candlestick Park So Some Of These Would Drop Safely Award (highest IFB%): Eric Chavez

Back before they had hot dog races, they had hot dog wrapper races out at the 'Stick. Boy, am I ever glad I never went to night games as a child. I doubt my delicate constitution could have handled it.

Dave Kingman Fly Balls are Scared of Me So They Hide in the Stands Award (highest HR/FB%): Jack Cust

There are exactly two player-seasons since 2002 in which a player hit a higher percentage of his fly balls for homers: Jim Thome's 2002 and Ryan Howard's 2006.

Duane Kuiper Couldn't Get it Out If The Bat Was Rocket-Assisted Award (lowest HR/FB%): Mark Kotsay

Ironically, I actually saw Kotsay's one homer this season; it was off Brad Lidge to send a game against the Astros to extra innings. The A's somehow ended that game with Jason Kendall playing the outfield. Needless to say, that did not work out well.

Derek Jeter If I Hit Like This Perhaps People Will Forget About My Defense Award (highest BABIP): Jack Cust, Jack Hannahan and Daric Barton

I'm declaring this one a three-way tie, since they were all pretty close and I'm not sure how much to weigh minor league stats here.

Jeromy Burnitz National Hit Like A Pirate Day Award (lowest BABIP): Mark Kotsay

Aarrgh.

Get it? Pirate? Aarrgh? It's a double entendre. See?

[ducks]

Jack Cust Contact Quality Award (highest OCSlg): Jack Cust

Well, shoot the horse and slap me silly. Whouda thunk.

Juan Pierre Contact Whatever the Exact Opposite of Quality Is Award (lowest OCSlg): Mark Kotsay

Impressively, Kotsay sweeps the negative "results" section of the Groundies. If Jason Kendall was still on the team, he might have given Kotsay a run for his money. As it is, he stands alone at the top of a pyramid of utter futility.

That's all for our excursion into batted ball data and its lessons. I hope you found this interesting and informative; it was certainly interesting, informative, and-- dare I say it-- fun to write.