I posed the question in reply #71 to Dave Cameron today in his chat. Below is the exchange:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-chat-42413/12:11 [Comment From JCAJCA: ]
JCA - is there a correlation between low contact % hitters decreasing their strike out rate and decreasing their BABIP? Danny Espinosa has dropped his K rate in half but his BABIP is off 100 points. Small sample size, but perhaps guys like these who do drop K rates have to do so by being more aggressive early and generating weaker contact through less selectivity.
Wednesday April 24, 2013 12:11 JCA
12:12 Dave Cameron: There's so much noise in BABIP that it would be tough to find a direct causation between those two things, but theoretically yes, if a hitter is making more contact on balls out of the strike zone, his K% would go down and so would his BABIP
Cameron is on to something. A quick look at DE's O-Swing% from 2011 - 2013 shows it has gone from 32% to 40.5% to 46.1%, while the O-contact has gone from 61.6% to 55% to 60%. In other words, his best offensive year, 2011, he was swinging at a lot fewer out of strike zone pitches, while now he is not only swinging at more than last year, but he is also making more contact. That helps explain more dribblers and pops.
Poll
