Hi there everybody.

Most of you reading this already know me from the forums. I go by the name of Rob (shocking, right?). About a week ago I took an opportunity to poke a bit of fun at our faithful administrator Tim for the lack of content on the front page.  About five minutes later I received a PM from Tim asking if I'd like to write for NSBB. He's got weird ways of punishing the insolent.

At any rate, I got to working. And I wrote up a long article in Word. This thing was deep, I tell ya. There was an introduction talking about Wee Willie Keeler. After that I spent pages trying to explain what BABIP was and what it meant. Then I did some other fun stuff with it. I showed it around to my friends for a few comments and you know what the response I got back was?

"Who are you writing this for?"

So I tossed the whole blasted thing. You lovely people aren't the mouthbreathers on Cubs.com who don't understand the basics of statistical analysis. You know them, use them, and mock the uneducated about RBI and pitcher wins all day long. And I've never felt more pretentious in my life than when I wrote that historical intro (apologies to our dear friend on the forums, OleMissCub). So I'm going to treat you fine folk like the target audience you are; intelligent, irreverent, and techno-savvy enough to ask questions in the comments section if you'd like more info. I'm always happy to at least point you in the right direction.

Now for the actual content. I took every single hitter on the Cubs last season with more than 48 PA (arbitrary cutoff because I wanted to include Carlos Zambrano) and ran their 2011 season batted ball data through a formula developed by slash12 of Beyond the Box Score to come up with their xBABIP (expected batting average on balls in play). I used that number to figure out how many hits they should have had last season with normal luck. I then added or subtracted any missing or extra hits in the same proportion of singles/doubles/triples they already had. It's an inelegant solution for estimating power, but it's better than just adding or subtracting singles.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the actual and "luck"-neutral batting lines for your 2011 Cubs. (Sorted by PA, luck-neutral stats denoted by an ‘x')

This is a somewhat better representation of how well these players were swinging the bats than their actual batting lines.  Don't take this to be a bizarre absolute though. That is not the same thing as saying "Tony Campana is a .325 true talent hitter." It's just saying that for 150 PA last season he swung the bat like one. Some stuff I took away as interesting is that Darwin Barney may have a bit more room for growth than I tend to give him credit for, Alfonso Soriano isn't quite done yet, and you should slap anybody who tells you Reed Johnson deserves a chance to start.

Oh, but I did like one thing from the Wee Willie Keeler intro, so I'm gonna drop it on you now. It's a classic quote of his when asked the secret to hitting.

"Hit ‘em where they aint!"

Was there anything you found interesting about these luck-neutral batting lines? Tell me in the comments!