I took a look at Ian Desmond's month by month stats today. A lot has been made of his second half stats. It's been mentioned that, going into today, he had a .290 / .327 / .399 line after the ASG. A closer look would show that what he really had was a great August due to an unusually high BABIP. here are his monthly numbers:
BA OBP SLG BABIP
April - .246 .307 .406 .302
May - .272 .296 .402 .289
June - .222 .259 .309 .295
July - .274 .300 .452 .304
Aug - .347 .385 .465 .393
Sep/oct- .252 .304 .350 .313
Looking at his monthly FB / LD / GB rates, his GB/FB ratio spiked from around 1.5:1 in every other month to 2:1 in August. OTOH, his LD rate dropped from 19 - 20 % in June and July to 12% in August and September. He also popped up more in August than July. He was a bit less hackstastic the last two months, but not good (went from 5+:1 K/BB to 3:1). In some ways, it looks like his July was a better hitting month in terms of quality of contact and power, but with bad luck, while he had better luck in August obscuring his worse contact mix.
