BABIP Bitterness!

Travis Snider is sucking so far this year, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. He's increased his walk rate (10.5% to 14.5%) from last year while simultaneously decreasing his strike out rate (32.4% to 25.4%). He's also hit line drives on 23% of his balls in play, which is very high. The end result? A BABIP of .133, yielding an average of .127.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, Austin Jackson is striking out in 37.2% of his plate appearances while walking in only 9.5% of them. Of course, he's hitting .313 thanks to a sky high BABIP of .491. Give him a still gaudy BABIP of .360 and his average drops all the way down to .233. Hell, Jackson's strikeout rate is so high that he struck out in every single game he had played in, until Tuesday's game against the Twins.

Durham Plays For Money???

Do we want to actually start having monetary prizes in this league? I know we've brought this up many times in the past few years and never followed through with it, but I think it would make things more fun and we could scale things so there is always an incentive to place higher (to solve the dump trades problem). Also, if we're going to do this we should figure it out soon, before we start to get too much of an idea how the standings are going to shake out.

What do you guys think?

BABIP Fun

Right now, I have the player with the highest BABIP on my team as well as the lowest!

Podsednik with .512 and Teixeira with .125

Other batted ball oddities:

Nick Swisher is hitting a measly .208 yet is 5th in the league in line drive percentage (28.6%).

Derek Jeter is hitting .323 yet has the 6th lowest line drive percentage (10.7%)

Speaking of Jeter, he has hit 3 home runs, yet 73% of his balls in play have been grounders.

Juan Pierre has made contact with 97% of the balls he has swung at outside of the strike zone.

Chris Davis has made contact with 36% of the balls he has swung at outside of the strike zone.

J.D. drew is thrown a first pitch for a strike in nearly 3/4 of his plate appearances (74.2%)

Switching DLs

Are you guys able to switch out someone in your DL spot for someone else who is injured? ESPN won't let me which is kind of annoying.

I forget...can you keep FA pick-ups?

Trade

I'm looking to trade away one of my OFs or Matsui (who may end up with OF eligibility) for a 2B and/or 3B. Let me know if you're interested.

A familiar position

already in last place. this must be a new record for my teams.

Today

I really wish I didn't have Sabathia on my team.

Is there a shared google doc with teams and current salaries / salary cap? I thought Bill did one but can't find one.