BABIP for pitchers is mostly a function of a pitcher’s defense and luck, rather than persistent skill. Thus, pitchers with abnormally high or low BABIPs are good bets to see their performances regress to the mean. In the Major Leagues the league average for modern pitcher BABIP is around .300.

Hitter BABIP is much more of a skill, based on how well they are able to hit and place the ball, along with their speed.

Equation:
BABIP = (H – HR) / (AB – K – HR + SF)

With those caveats in mind I decided to take a look at both the pitcher and hitter BABIPs for Clemson.

Given the definition above, the likelihood of Patrick Andrews and Matt Campbell continuing their mastery over batters is not high.

Alternatively, the BABIPs for Kyle Schnell, Clate Schmidt and Johnathan Meyer should move closer to the mean.

Steve Wilkerson and Shane Kennedy lead the Tigers in BABIP, just as they do in batting average, while being tied for the team lead in strikeouts.

Those two facts seem to conflict with each other to an extent.  If BABIP is a function of skill for batters why do the two players with the highest BABIP have the highest strikeout total?  If these players are skilled at hitting and placing the ball along with their speed, why do they swing and miss so often?

These numbers would also indicate that Jay Baum and Maleeke Gibson may be due for some luck.

Baum, in particular, would seem to be a candidate for improvement at the plate.  Baum rarely strikes out (11% of plate appearances) and if you are consistently making contact eventually the ball is going to fall at least some of the time, right?

But looking at it another way, because BABIP for batters is much more aligned with the skill of the batter (per Baseball Prospectus), there is a chance that Baum and Gibson may not turn out to be very good college hitters.

While Gibson is only 100 plate appearances into his freshman season and we have seen flashes of potential, Baum is struggling with a .224 career average in 295 at bats over nearly two full seasons.

Is Baum in a slump and/or unlucky or is .224 “normal” and what we can expect from Baum moving forward?

Logic would seem to indicate that not many players suffer through 2 year slumps and then become average or above average hitters.

Baum is a talented and versatile player that can contribute despite his struggles at the plate. That said, these numbers hint that expecting more at the plate from Baum may not be the wisest bet.

I’ve documented Tyler Slaton’s numbers in this metric before, but it’s worth pointing out that Slaton came to bat with 15 runners on base in the Florida State series and ended up with 1 RBI.

At .17 runs produced per plate appearance it would take roughly 6 plate appearances for Slaton to produce 1 run.

Duggar has come to bat with more runners on than any other Tiger, which makes sense for a guy who has played every game and typically bats third.

Unfortunately for Clemson Duggar’s 12.7% conversion of runners into RBI is approaching the lower end of the team average and 1 for 8 (12.5%) is close to Duggar’s season average and the only regular players below this average are Tyler Slaton and Jay Baum.

“Goose” proved that he is about more than the strikeout.

That said, Gossett is averaging 8.7 strikeouts, 3.2 walks and  7.0 hits per 9 innings.  I’ll take that any day.

Tyler Slaton had a tough Saturday. Three times he came up with two men in scoring position, two of them with the bases loaded an less than two outs. A groundout, pop out and strike out later Slaton had left 8 men on base, 6 in scoring position, in his three at bats.

I don’t question Jack Leggett pinch hitting for Maleeke Gibson in the 6th inning with the bases loaded and one out. I do find the choice of Jay Baum (.217 vs. left handers) interesting. Baum doesn’t strike out much and had hit into only 2 double plays in 68 previous at bats against left handers, so you understand the move from that perspective and hindsight is 20/20.

That said, Mike Triller and his .500 average vs. left handers remained seated. Triller hasn’t faced the competition displayed in Tallahassee, but at the same time Baum has 4 RBI of the 58 runners on base when facing a lefty (6.9%).

Matt Campbell isn’t too far behind. Campbell gave up 2 hits in an inning on Tuesday, but opponents are batting only .195 against him, Campbell’s WHIP is 1.07 and he has 30 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings to date.

Campbell has gotten 43 right handed batters out with 21 of those being by strikeout and Campbell strikes out over 38% of the right handed batters he faces.

Jonathan Meyer had 3 2/3 scoreless innings on Tuesday and Meyer has struck out 28 right handed batters while walking only 3. That works out to a 9.3 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio.

The starting trio of Daniel Gossett, Matthew Crownover and Zack Erwin – a sophomore and two freshmen – have WHIPs of 1.15, 1.14 and 1.10 respectively.

Speaking of freshmen, the Clemson freshmen have accounted for 41% of the innings pitched (198) and 42% of Clemson’s wins (16).

On the offensive side, freshmen have accounted for 30% of the Tigers’ plate appearances, including two starters that have played every game (Dugger and Krieger), the current lead-off batter (Gibson) and Tuesday’s hero (Kevin Bradley).

The aforementioned Bradley began Tuesday batting .132 and was 0 for 14 against left handed pitchers on the season. While Bradley’s game-winning home run didn’t come against the USC-Upstate left handed starter, Bradley did get his first hit against a LHP earlier in the game.

Steve Wilkerson and Shane Kennedy don’t care which arm you are throwing with. Wilkerson is batting .309 vs. RHPs and .310 vs. LHPs, while Kennedy is actually hitting LHPs better than RHPs – .329 to .323.

Maleeke Gibson has added something to the leadoff spot and some of these numbers bear that out. Gibson has 1 less run scored and 2 more RBI than Tyler Slaton in 82 less plate appearnces and with 37 less runners on base during those plate appearnces. While not all of either players plate appearances have come at the leadoff spot a significant number of them have and that portends well for the future.

On the flip side, Gibson walks rarely (4.55% of the time) which should be a staple for someone at the top of the order. Both Slaton (11.18%) and Brittle (10.91%) take base on balls far more often than Gibson.

One thing Gibson has done extremely well for the leadoff batter is knock in runs. In fact, of anyone on the team with significant playing time, Gibson has the fourth highest percentage of runners on base knocked in.

Boulware leads the team in RBI% despite the fact that he is fourth on the team in number of runners on base while at bat.


Boulware also put some distance between himself and McGibbon in Runs Produced over the weekend while Maleeke Gibson had a huge series and seemed to add something to the leadoff spot that has been missing for a good portion of the season.

Whether that is related to Gibson’s development as he nears the end of his freshman season or more to the caliber of competition remains to be seen.

Tyler Slaton has cooled a little bit since peaking in mid-April after replacing Thomas Brittle at the leadoff spot.

Gibson still has work to do to be a long-term solution at the top of the order – batting .240 with only 4 walks in 83 plate appearances overall and only 1 walk in 40 plate appearances against left handers.

Not only that, but the Tigers had lost the first two games of a 3 game series in Chapel Hill and faced the #1 ranked Tar Heels on Monday, April 1st. And oh yeah, Freshman Matthew Crownover was starting for the Tigers.

The Tigers went on to win that game in 11 innings, Crownover pitched well and Krieger went 2 for 5 with an RBI.

It was the beggining of a good thing for Clemson and Krieger. Clemson has gone 21-4 and Kreiger has hit .348 (32 for 92) with 16 RBI in that span.

While Krieger still has some work to do against left handed pitchers (.247, only 5 walks in 89 plate appearances), he’s batting .314 against righties with a .415 OBP.

Krieger’s bat is not the only hot one during this streak, but Krieger’s penchant for coming through in the clutch, coupled with the fact that he has come to bat with the second most men on base of any Tiger (172) means his bat has been more important than your average 7 hole hitter and a big reason for the Tigers recent success.


Patrick Andrews continues to baffle batters of all shapes, sizes and batting stances. A 1-2-3 inning on Saturday lowered Andrews’ ERA to 2.33 and WHIP to 0.96.

Left handed batters are 4 for 31 against Andrews with 7 strikeouts and 0 walks. Perhaps at some point Jack Leggett will defy convential wisdom and bring Andrews in to face a lefty.

Speaking of which, sure was nice to see Joseph Moorefield have a successful complete inning on Sunday. It’s been a crazy statistical year for Moorefield and despite only throwing 4.1 innings this season I get the feeling Moorefield is going to be needed in the postseason.

Shane Kennedy takes the lead in average, with Steve Wilkerson closing in on slugging percentage and John McGibbon in RBI.

It will be interesting to see how Garrett Boulware handles this weekends series and more interesting to see if he’s given any rest.

Just a hunch, but it seems to me that Boulware knows no other way than play all out every day and the only way to stop that from happening resides with Coach Leggett.

On the other hand, with Clemson fighting (supposedly) for a regional host spot, every game is important and who else would you rather have in the lineup and behind the plate than #30?

Table 1 – Against All Batters

 
Table 2 – Against Right Handed Batters

 
Table 3 – Against Left Handed Batters

And sure enough, Clemson, currently 3rd in fielding percentage in the ACC, is 7th in defensive efficiency – turning balls in play into outs – while Maryland is 6th.

Neither is particularly good at turning batted balls into outs.