I’ve lured you here under false pretenses. Sorry about that, but I won’t take up much of your time. This isn’t a post about an actual race, it’s about a metaphorical race and I’ll keep it short. Over the last few months, Alex Avila and Victor Martinez have started raking. Fifty-seven games in, both had OPS’ under .600. That’s not very good if you’re new to OPS. Since then, they’ve been better. Much better. They’re racing to the finish line, one might say. Normally we’d use wOBA or wRC+, but OPS is way easier to gather for an analysis like that, hopefully you’ll accept it as a stand in. Take a look.
Since game 57, they’ve both been on a march toward awesomeness. The two flat lines in blue are Avila’s DL stints. Let’s get a quick look at their numbers before and after and then I’ll let you go.
Martinez |
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| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| First 57 | 234 | 0.226 | 0.278 | 0.311 |
| After | 419 | 0.346 | 0.401 | 0.493 |
Avila |
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| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| First 57 | 158 | 0.18 | 0.272 | 0.309 |
| After | 201 | 0.269 | 0.355 | 0.446 |
The Tigers were 31-26 through their first 57. They are 60-39 since. The two are probably related.
New English D 
In the first half both seem to have had very low BABIP, Martinez especially was still hitting line drives they just happened to be right at somebody. With the torrid pace both are on was it a return to career avg BABIP?
For Martinez, yes. He was just getting unlucky on hard hit balls and that is balancing out. For Avila, his BABIP was low, but there appeared to be an actual reason tied to his performance not just his luck. He’s making much harder contact in the second half while Martinez is pretty much the same in that department