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Date      Tm Opp Rslt     Dec    IP   H ER BB  SO  ERA           Exited
July      Tm Opp Rslt     Dec    IP   H ER BB  SO  ERA           Exited
Jul17    TBR CLE W4-2  W(6-6)   5.0   3  2  5   3 4.39 6t 1– 0 out  a1
Jul22    TBR SEA L1-2  L(6-7)   8.0   5  2  0   7 4.23     8t 3 out  d1
Jul28    TBR LAA W3-0  W(7-7)   6.1   4  0  2   6 4.01 7b — 1 out  a3
August    Tm Opp Rslt     Dec    IP   H ER BB  SO  ERA           Exited
Aug3     TBR BAL W2-0  W(8-7)   5.1   6  0  3   6 3.84 6t -2- 1 out  a1
Aug9     TBR TOR W7-1  W(9-7)   6.0   2  1  2   6 3.73     6t 3 out  a5
Aug14    TBR SEA         L2-3   7.0   6  1  1   9 3.60     7b 3 out  a1
Aug19    TBR LAA W8-3 W(10-7)   6.1   5  2  2   5 3.57 7b 1– 1 out  a4
                          TBR 143.2 126 57 65 138                  3.57

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original TableGenerated 8/21/2012.

Also, only 6 Rangers fans checked in on this post?

High LD% is the stat that generally tells you if a player is making solid contact and “squaring up the ball up” much more so than a high HR/FB%. Both Trout (23.8%) and Harper (20.5%) have relatively high LD%’s, so they are both squaring it up pretty well when they are making contact. A higher LD% will typically result in a higher BABIP, with the caveat being that LD% is sort of a subjective stat since a human operator looks at every batted ball and determines whether it was a ground ball, line drive or fly out and sometimes a ball could be one or the other. That said, their differences in BABIP can’t just be explained by the LD% alone (Also, Trout’s HR/FB% does not have an effect on his BABIP because HR’s are not considered “in play” and not accounted for within BABIP).

Two other factors that influence BABIP though are speed and GB% (ground balls have a higher BABIP than fly balls). Trout is obviously incredibly fast, and probably on a different level than Harper in terms of pure speed (and probably a smarter baserunner too). Trout has 15 infield hits vs 10 for Harper. You might expect the difference to be a little more, but Harper has a higher GB% at 45.7% to Trout’s 41.8%.

The last thing I took at a look at was their PitchFX swing data, and that might shed a little bit more light on the massive difference in BABIP. Trout has a 40.7% swing% coupled with a very strong 83.5% contact rate, while Harper’s is 49.6% with a slightly more average 76.3% contact rate. So Trout is more selective, and makes more (and better–higher LD%) contact when he does swing. Trout also swings at pitches outside of the zone less (28.0% to 34.3%), which might partly explain the better contact that he is making (if it follows that contact out of the zone is more likely to lead to weaker contact). So, while their similar BB and K numbers may lead one to think that their approaches are of equal quality, when you look below the surface, Trout’s approach seems to be more refined.

Does all of that make up the difference between a .387 vs a .292 BABIP? Probably not.The rest is probably just due to…well, luck and the bounce of the ball. Considering how hard Harper hits the ball, he’s probably hit into a few more unlucky outs, since you’d expect a guy with his speed and hitting as many line drives as he is to be BABIPing well over .300. But it isn’t all luck. Trout has definitely been the better hitter in terms of approach as well as results and has laid down an incredibly strong baseline, even when his gaudy HR/FB rate regresses. But Harper hasn’t been as average as he’s shown either.

Also, @jtorrey13 it isn’t reasonable to regress Trout’s BABIP to .300 when all his speed, batted ball and swing data say that he should be well above that number. This being his rookie year, we don’t have a baseline for him, but it’s safe to assume that is above .300. Take Dexter Fowler, for example, who is a very speedy player and has very similar career batted ball data to Trout (22.4% LD, 43% GB, 34.4% FB) aside from HR/FB% (which isn’t part of BABIP). His career BABIP is .350. Sure, it fluctuates from a low of .328 to a high of .382 (this year) but his baseline is somewhere around his career number of .350. Every player has a different BABIP baseline based on his skill set.

TL;DR: This year, it’s not close. Trout has been incredible, while Harper has been slightly above average, which is pretty damn good for a rookie who is the youngest player in baseball. But Trout is on a different level and most of it is not luck.

Cool numbers. Surprisingly similiar. That HR/FB ratio is incredible. That tells me that the guy is making great contact, and squaring it up a lot! Sustainable or not, if you make quality contact a lot, you will get rewarded a lot. So to me, the BABIP is explained by the HR/FB. Good contact explains them both, and could explain why Harper is lagging so far behind in both as well.

Matt Moore and Yoenis Cespedes are playing for second place this year.

Trout
PA – 454

Harper
PA – 427

I calculated that to get his BABIP around .300, Trout would lose about 26 hits – so his total would be about 59 singles.

Trout
1B – 85
2B – 22
3B – 6
HR – 24
BABIP – .387
BB – 42
SO – 91
HR/FB% – 22.40%

Harper
1B – 61
2B – 16
3B – 6
HR – 12
BABIP – .292
BB – 43
SO – 86
HR/FB% – 12.10%

Obviously the big differences between these two phenoms reside in BABIP and HR/FB% (which explain the difference in singles and HRs to some degree.) I’m not sure if either of Trout’s marks in those categories are sustainable, but the HR/FB% might be. (Looking at Albert Pujols over the past 10 years, he only had two years that met Trout’s current HR/FB%, so maybe not. Then again, Pujols’ average HR/FB% over the past eleven years is 19.5%, so he may not drop that far.)

Fielding Runs: Trout – 5.2; Harper – 7.4 (and since this isn’t a whole season or multiple seasons of fielding information, the caveat of small sample size should be taken.) I was surprised that Trout didn’t blow Harper out of the water.

The obvious difference is Trout’s ability on the basepaths. 39 SBs with only 3 CS is amazing. 4.2 Baserunning runs vs. -0.9 BsR is a lot of value.

Trout is fantastic. However, don’t think he is standing that far above Harper hitting wise as it looks right now.

He is a rookie, he was dominant, and yet I still wasn’t satisfied, because I have watched him actually be dominant. When you do that to the Angels, and people still find mistakes, you know you are really freaking good.

He’s been pretty good for the last month to say the least.

DAT OPP IP H ER BB K DEC
8/19 @LAA 6.1 5 2 2 5 W
8/14 @Sea 7.0 6 1 1 9 ND
8/9 Tor 6.0 2 1 2 6 W
8/3 Bal 5.1 6 0 3 6 W
7/28 @LAA 6.1 4 0 2 6 W
7/22 Sea 8.0 5 2 0 7 L
7/17 Cle 5.0 3 2 5 3 W