No prospect currently in the majors has generated more buzz, and for more reasons, than Detroit Tigers center fielder and leadoff hitter Austin Jackson. The former Yankee prospect, acquired in this off-season's three-way melee that saw Curtis Granderson head to the Yankees and Edwin Jackson go to Arizona, was given the keys to the Tiger offense before he got to Spring Training, and at first glance seems to have kicked it into high gear. But a closer look at his numbers shows that he may just be revving the engines.
The thing that makes Jackson's start so interesting is the incredible juxtaposition between his ability to consistently hit the ball hard and yet at the same time, consistently not hit it at all. There's something almost inherently impossible about that very scenario, and yet that's exactly what is happening.
Ninety-one plate appearances into his career, Jackson is batting an outstanding .325, yet is leading the league in strikeouts (by a lot) with 32. In addition to the strange contact rates for Jackson, no player has ever struck out as much with as little power to show for it, an observation made by Joe Pawlikowski of Fan Graphs.com, who digs deeper into the numbers and has some unfavorable comparables for Jackson should he continue this trend.
The other glaring problem with Jackson is that his high batting average is reliant on an unthinkably high Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP), a stat that gets over-used in many circles by baseball writers who don't understand it, but in this case provides a cut-and-dried explanation for why a player who swings and misses so much can still hit .300. Jackson's BABIP so far in the 2010 season? .520. The league average is around .300 and for a hitter with good speed like Jackson's, it could be slightly higher (his career BABIP in the minor leagues is .361). So why is Jackson's BABIP so high? Well, besides some good luck, Rob Neyer and Steven Goldman point to Jackson's unsustainable line drive rate, which is at 33% on the season while the league average is usually in the high-teens. Two of the best pure hitters in the game, Ichiro and Joe Mauer, have career line drive rates of 20.7% and 22.7% respectively.
So what does all of this mean for Jackson and the Tigers? Regression, of course. Jackson is a talented player, and has already done some good things this season, things which John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press points out, are drawing praise from opposing managers. But managers have been seeing line drives, and we can't expect them to be aware of the fact that Jackson is hitting more of them than he can possibly sustain.
Jackson is a talented player, but he is still raw and swings and misses too frequently. Until he changes that, his batting average should begin to drop as his good luck wears off. Jackson has never been a high contact hitter, but for Tigers' fans, the hope is that as his BABIP drops to more normal levels, so will his strikeouts. A lower BABIP but more contact would keep Jackson's batting average respectable, allowing him to remain as the Tigers' leadoff hitter, but it only works if he is able to make more contact.
