The Jimmy Rollins Slump-tacular

Let's start with a few basic statistics before we jump into what is going on with the 2007 NL MVP (no he didn't deserve it that year but that is a different topic)...

Rollins Career Averages: .273/.329/.434 line with a BABIP of .295, combine that with 16 HR 11 3b 39 2b and 38 SB (82.6% success rate) and plus defense and you have the makings of not an MVP, but good shortstop, not to mention, a team leader and fan favorite.

Rollins 2009: .205/.250/.319 with a BABIP of .213 6 HR 1 3b 15 2B and 11 SB (68.75% success rate) and decent defense.

Right away something sticks out. With hitters their BABIP (batting average for ball in play) does not necessarily hover around .300 like it does for many pitchers (historically) but rather they tend to hit around the same BABIP each year (pitcher's do the same thing, but the data on pitchers tends to tell the story of .300 being the mark that the numbers tend to gravitate towards over the course of a season). Rollins BABIP is a full 82 points LOWER than his career average which seems to suggest one thing-He is wicked unlucky.

But wait, there's more!

One of the great things we can do is look at his success against certain types of pitches to see where he has not had as much success. I am going to use 2008 as they year to compare then and now to because 1. It is almost a perfect match for an average year for him and 2. there is lots of data available. One look at his data suggest that his success against fastballs has declined in the past year.

2008 against fastballs: 877 fastballs faced, 324 balls, 213 called strikes, 17 Swinging strikes, 6 Home Runs, 29 Singles, 16 Doubles, 2 Triples.
2009 against fastballs: 417 fastballs faced, 168 balls, 98 called strikes, 14 Swinging strikes, 6 Home Runs, 23 Singles, 5 doubles, 1 Triple.

Now remember, Rollins faces a fastball around 63% of the time. He has gone from swinging and missing 1.9% of the time to 3.3% of the time. That's not a huge difference. The difference partially comes from exchanging doubles for singles, which is not a good thing.

If we use some of the wonderful data that the people at Fangraphs (who, by the way, have Rollins at around 12 runs BELOW replacement on fastballs a drop of 11.2 runs since last year)have put together it is easy to see another trend that the Pitch F/x data backs up...Rollins is swinging more, especially out of the zone. Not just that, but he has traded line drives for fly balls (almost 33% more fly balls and 33% less line drives). With line drive percentage being positively correlated with BABIP it seems that we may have found the problem.

Bottom Line: Jimmy Rollins is battling a case of missing more fastballs(and not hitting the ones he gets to hit hard enough), getting under too many balls, while losing a touch of power while possibly trying to do a little too much.