Real Improvements

Pizza Cutter wrote an interesting piece awhile back about what statistics stabilize the fastest. In it, he found that three pretty important metrics, strikeout rate, walk rate, and line drive rate all stabilize pretty quickly. In light of this, I thought I'd look into which players have improved/declined the most in these three areas this year, as compared to 2007.

Here are the five guys who have shown the most improvement in these three categories (all numbers from FanGraphs, through Monday's games):

Bay is back to his old self after an injury-plagued 2007. But he has shown improvement even relative to 04-06. That's (barely) a career-high BB rate, and (easily) a career-low K rate. Combine that with his LD% going back to his career average, and the return of his power, and he's back to producing at an All-Star level. Imagine if the Indians had traded Lee for him during the offseason. It would've been Volquez-Hamilton part two (although, going forward, I think I'd rather have him than Lee).

Upton had a 0.42 BB/K rate last year, so there was really nowhere to go but up. And that's what he's done, more than doubling that rate. His overall stats aren't overwhelming--he'll have a hard time matching last year's .399 BABIP--but it is a big step forward for Upton, who won't turn 24 until August.

Chipper is in his own little world. Improvement could've been expected from the previous two, but not from the 36-year old who had a 1.029 OPS last year. Hitting a ton of line drives and rarely striking out is a good formula for a high batting average; he's going to have a legitimate shot at this .400 thing if he keeps that up.

The increased walk rate has boosted Martin's OBP almost 50 points. Like Upton, his overall value hasn't significantly appreciated, since he's hitting for less power. It makes you wonder if these guys are consciously taking a different approach at the plate, and trading power for OBP, or if the power will come back over the coming months.

Some regression was inevitable for Holliday; his .380 2007 BABIP was 36 points above his career average coming into the season. But he's done a nice job of minimizing it, increasing his BB/K ratio from 0.50 to 0.93. Somewhat strangely, he's hitting fewer fly balls, which is probably a bad idea in Coors, and has contributed to a 42 point dip in ISO.

Tomorrow I'll look at the five guys who have seen the sharpest declines in these categories.