Houston Chronicle: Levine: Luck a factor for Astros’ pitchers

Among the Astros with more than 25 innings pitched this year, the lowest BABIP figures belong to relievers commonly thought of as two of the best this year in Wesley Wright (.224) Geoff Geary (.234) and Tim Byrdak (.250), while the highest belongs to Dave Borkowski (.381) whose stats perhaps shouldn’t be as bad as they are.

But BABIP only tells the whole story of luck if you believe that how the ball comes off the bat is luck.

According to Baseball-Reference.com, the BABIP on line drives is .717, compared to just .233 on grounders and .147 on fly balls.

So if Geary and Byrdak give up low line drive totals, maybe it’s not entirely luck as much as it’s just inducing bad contact. And that’s exactly the case, as Wright (13.4 percent), Geary (13.6 percent) and Byrdak (16.3 percent) fall below the NL average of 19.1 percent of all balls that come off the bat as line drives.

In Borkowski’s case, it’s further proof that he’s been to a large extent unlucky this year as only 15 percent of the swings in play against him are line drives, but he still has that .381 BABIP.

Wow!...7th straight year Borkowski has been unlucky.