Blangraphs

You may have heard that Blanton's against the ropes lately. In the months between our farewell to 56 and now, Joe has finished a season with the Dodgers and then started this season with the California Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County 92806. This year, he's back in the saddle again, but it's not all little dogies and rock candy mountains (The Angels' stadium is on Gene Autry way). Joe has gone 1-8 and allowed 100 hits, and is in danger of losing a spot in the rotation. How can this be happening?? We turn to Joe for answers, and he responds:

"I feel like I've pretty much thrown the ball the way I want to throw. Stuff's been fine, and they've just hit balls where people aren't"

Now, we don't know what legendary fake cowboy Orvon G. Autry, former owner of the Angels, would say about advanced metrics, but his Cowboy Code does state in rule #3 that one must always tell the truth. We at Blangraphs take that to mean that we should share as much information as possible, so we took a look at Blanton's comment in light of the stats. It turns out that Joe's BABIP was .386, the highest of all qualified starters in the MLB. BABIP measures how likely a ball in play is to be a hit, and if it's above a player's career average, stat enthusiasts call the resulting performance "unlucky" instead of calling the pitcher "bad." The extreme difference between Joe's career BABIP (.307) and this year suggests that Joe has simply been extremely unlucky. Hang in there, Joe, the second worst BABIP of the season belongs to Cy Young winner Justin Verlander, so it can happen to anyone.