Aaron Hill Having Historically Unlucky Season for Toronto Blue Jays

Toronto Blue Jays 2B Aaron Hill entered the 2010 season as one of the top hitting second basemen in the game.

He was coming off a career year in 2009 in which he hit .286/.330/.499 with 36 HRs.

He was an All-Star, finished in the top 12 in MVP voting, and won the Silver Slugger Award at the second base position.

I think most people didn’t expect him to put up those types of numbers again but didn’t think he would be that far off. Bill James projected a .283/.337/.463 with 20 HR season from Hill at the beginning of the season. Again, not the season he had last year, but still very respectable.

However, I don’t think most people expected Hill to have the poor and historically unlucky season he is having. Hill has a very poor slash line of .209/.276/.400 with 24 HRs.

The home runs are there, but the average is not. The reason the average is not is because of Hill’s historically low BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play).

Hill’s BABIP is .199. That is historically unlucky. I say historically because if Hill remains this unlucky for the next two weeks, he will have the lowest BABIP of this decade!

Here are the players with the lowest BABIP since 2000...

2009: Ian Kinsler – .241

2008: Paul Konerko – .244

2007: Ray Durham – .233

2006: Clint Barmes – .241

2005: Andruw Jones – .240

2004: Tony Batista – .225

2003: Rafael Palmeiro – .240

2002: Jay Gibbons – .253

2001: Brady Anderson – .228

2000: Robin Ventura – .237

As a matter of fact, if Hill stays at .199 for the remainder of the season, then he will have the lowest BABIP since 1974, which was the first year data was collected for this stat. The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ted Simmons had a .200 BABIP in 1981.

I don’t think that was a record Hill was shooting for at the beginning of the season.

Of course, Hill’s BABIP can’t all be attributed to bad luck. Hill’s line-drive percentage (10 percent) is the lowest of his career by far, which means he is not squaring up the ball. His 55 percent fly-ball percentage tells me he is hitting a lot of lazy fly balls to the outfield.

I think Hill needs to make some adjustments in the offseason and figure out how to generate more bat speed. If you want to connect the dots here, Hill’s bat speed is slower, which means he can’t catch up on fastballs (-6.8 wFB).

Since he can’t catch up to fastballs, he has to cheat, which causes him to swing at breaking stuff outside the strike zone (31.8 O-Swing Percentage, which is the highest of Hill’s career). Once he makes contact, since it’s not solid contact, he pops the ball up to the outfield.

While Hill needs to make some adjustments at the plate, unfortunately for him, he has had a historically unlucky season. Things can only get better for Hill next season.

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