The Line Drive Twins
After being pointed towards this article on MopUpDuty.com, I started thinking. Just why did the Twinkies have such a high line drive percentage (LD%) last year, and how did they do it while hitting a below-average amount of doubles?
Here’s the leaderboard in the AL for LD% in 2006:
| Team | LD% | BABIP |
| MIN | 21.4% | .319 |
| CLE | 20.7% | .327 |
| CHA | 20.1% | .309 |
| BOS | 20.0% | .302 |
| TEX | 20.0% | .314 |
| BAL | 19.9% | .305 |
| KC | 19.8% | .314 |
| TOR | 19.5% | .310 |
| OAK | 19.4% | .288 |
| DET | 19.1% | .312 |
| NYA | 19.1% | .319 |
| SEA | 18.8% | .302 |
| TB | 18.7% | .288 |
| LAA | 18.5% | .304 |
| —– | —– | —– |
| League | 19.7% | .308 |
I threw in BABIP for fun, just to see if there were any correlations. There seems to be, but it’s not strong.
So how did the Twins top the league in line drives, yet only rank 11th out of 14 AL teams in doubles?
Well, I think it all comes down to the Jason Tyner school of hitting. That is, never hit a home run, and only have enough power to hit a line drive single.
In the American League, there are about 3.37 singles hit for every double. Here’s the team breakdown:
| Team | 1B/2B |
| Minnesota Twins | 4.20 |
| Seattle Mariners | 3.99 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 3.76 |
| Oakland Athletics | 3.63 |
| Chicago White Sox | 3.57 |
| Detroit Tigers | 3.44 |
| Tampa Bay Devil Rays | 3.39 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 3.37 |
| New York Yankees | 3.21 |
| Kansas City Royals | 3.04 |
| Boston Red Sox | 2.98 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 2.92 |
| Cleveland Indians | 2.86 |
| Texas Rangers | 2.82 |
Surprise, surprise, the Twins lead the way. Not only that, but they have no less than ten players who had at least 100 at-bats, and hit at least four singles for every double.
| AB | 1B | 2B | 1B/2B | LD% | |
| J Tyner | 218 | 61 | 5 | 12.200 | 27.0 |
| S Stewart | 174 | 43 | 5 | 8.600 | 14.2 |
| L Ford | 234 | 42 | 6 | 7.000 | 16.4 |
| L Castillo | 584 | 142 | 22 | 6.455 | 17.7 |
| J Castro | 156 | 28 | 5 | 5.600 | 20.5 |
| L Rodriguez | 115 | 21 | 4 | 5.250 | 19.2 |
| N Punto | 459 | 104 | 21 | 4.952 | 23.6 |
| T Hunter | 557 | 101 | 21 | 4.810 | 18.0 |
| J Kubel | 220 | 37 | 8 | 4.625 | 20.6 |
| J Bartlett | 333 | 81 | 18 | 4.500 | 22.2 |
| M Redmond | 179 | 48 | 13 | 3.692 | 27.0 |
| J Mauer | 521 | 128 | 36 | 3.556 | 24.9 |
| R White | 337 | 58 | 17 | 3.412 | 21.3 |
| J Morneau | 592 | 118 | 37 | 3.189 | 23.5 |
| P Nevin | 218 | 27 | 9 | 3.000 | 25.0 |
| M Cuddyer | 557 | 88 | 41 | 2.146 | 20.6 |
| T Batista | 178 | 25 | 12 | 2.083 | 21.9 |
I’ve highlighted the seven players on the Twins who both had an above average LD%, and an above average singles-to-doubles ratio. As I guessed, Jason Tyner hits an amazing 12.2 singles for every double, and has a huge 27.0% line drive mark.
I’m inclined to think that this is much more a result of line-drive singles, than of scorer error, as is suggested at Mop Up Duty. What do you think?
February 8th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I compared the hitters with 200 AB’s (minus Kubel, no 05 playing time) and 11 of the 13 had a rise in LD%. Rondell White strikes he as odd.
2004 (Tigers):
LD 13.7%, .290 BABIP
2005 (Tigers)
LD 16.9%, .334 BABIP
2006 Twins
LD 21.7% LD, .275 BABIP
Aging player, huge increase in LD%, but a big decline in BABIP.
Even without this, 11 of 13 increase is pretty amazing. Maybe it’s nothing, but man, that’s a really odd increse. And considering Twins .214 was so much greater than the 2nd place White Sox at .201, along with only a .105 difference in LD and BABIP (.319), it’s really odd. A lot of things are starting to pile up.
February 8th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
After re-reading I had another thought. If the Twins are mostly LD singles hitters, wouldn’t that translate to a higher BABIP ratio than .105?
February 8th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I’m getting to be a bother, sorry. One last thing.
The players on the top of the list over 5.0,the top singles hitters (Great idea BTW, never thought of it), made up the decline group of the 13 I alluded to. The two declines were Stewart, and Castillo. Tyner had the big increase, but a small sample in 2005. The others I didn’t include due to low AB’s (under 200 in 06)
The bottom half of the list, the power hitters, had the big increase. To see the chart shoot back over to the comments section on my site.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but my new thought is that the scorer gave out LD for some questionable outfield flyouts.