Add new comment

Yesterday they showed a kind of heap map of the strike done with a red dot for each single, blue for each double and green for HR by Ackley since the all star break (or HR might have been blue, but that's not important). It showed pretty well that he's been getting singles and even a couple doubles on outside pitches. It does seem as simple as that continuing for him to not only keep this going to a large extent but probably also increase his BB totals as pitchers start to nibble more and umps start giving him those calls more (finally! )
Every other time he's had stretches nearly this good there's been a couple "Yeah, but"s about the stats that aren't easy to look past. His low walks seem not so worrisome given that pitchers are still assisting to how he's currently hitting and his BABIP isn't so high that I'm worried he'll crash to earth shortly. Especially looking at his season total of .292. Maybe I'm a fool, but it seems to me that a fast LH hitter with good bat and zone control who hits plenty of LD and GB should be able to sustain .320+ BABIP. The most similar profile I can find for Ackley in batted ball type % with similar speed is actually RH, and Justin Upton has a .332 career BABIP. Wouldn't a LH Upton potentially beat out more infield singles? Maybe Upton has more pop, but judging from several recent evaluations it sounds like enough people think there is possibility he can hit about that many HR but with more doubles. Ackleys .293 career BABIP seems to me to have more to do with rolling over pitches away in the past than having any bearing on projecting who he'll be if he continues with the skills it seems he now owns. I'm a believer.