A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Geraldo Perdomo repeatedly getting robbed by defenses making some very good plays against him.
Well, Mets third baseman Bo Bichette is dealing with this in a pretty big way too. He enters May hitting .230.
Bichette got off to a brutal start to the season at the plate. He was 4-for-31 in his first seven games. Since then, he’s been better but he hasn’t quite yet been the Bichette that the Mets thought they were getting when they signed him.
But it’s hard to fault Bichette for some of his ‘struggles’ when you see what’s happened to him.
We track Good Fielding Plays and Defensive Misplays for fielders. Good Fielding Plays vary in nature but share the common thread of a play requiring extra effort that netted a positive consequence. The ones we’re looking at are specific to batted balls and plays that denied Bichette hits.
Bichette already has 8 of them against him. Take a look at all of these!
The punchline here is that there were 8 such plays against Bichette all of last season. He’s never had more than 10 against him in any season.
There are other ways to measure how Bichette has been shorted so far this season.
Our Defense Independent Batting Statistics, which are based on our hit probability calculations (calculated via where balls are hit, how hard they’re hit, and other factors) have Bichette with an expected batting average of .292. He’s basically short 8 hits of his expected total (seems about right!) Baseball Savant, which calculates expected batting average based on launch angle and exit velocity (different from what we do), has similar expected numbers for Bichette.
Additionally, there have been more Defensive Runs Saved against the balls Bichette has hit than against any hitter in MLB this season.
With all the things that the Mets have to worry about, Bichette’s low batting average probably isn’t one of them. You would think that so long as he keeps doing what he’s doing, chances are that things will even out over time, though the Mets have been so snakebit this year, who knows if that will be true.
