Albert and Luck

Funky game today, to say the least.  Even great pitchers need a little luck to throw a no-hitter, and Ortiz had a fair amount going today.  Duncan in particular has to feel a little cheated; he hit the ball hard multiple times, and has nothing tangible to show for it.  Anyway...all the talk about Albert has made me wonder how lucky he's been this year, so I checked out his BABIP.  Don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but Albert's BABIP is way down from his career marks.

From 2001-2005, his BABIPs were .341, .310, .350, .304, and .318, respectively.  That's an average BABIP of .324.  This year he's down to .276 after today's game.  That's quite a dip--the implication being that Albert has had a bit of a hard-luck year.  Which sounds a little silly, considering he's still putting up a ludicrous .321/.423/.681 batting line.  Still, I was wondering what his numbers would be like if his BABIP were more in line with his 2001-2005 average, so I gave him 17 more singles to raise his BABIP to .323.  With those 17 extra singles--singles, mind you--added to his numbers, Albert's line would be a frightening .360/.456/.720, which is top-30 all-time territory.  Yikes.

Keep in mind, this is just bringing his BABIP up to its established levels, and doing it all with singles.  If he were having a "lucky" year (like 2003, if you're inclined to call it that), and if some of those hits were XBH instead of singles (not implausible), he'd be in truly rarefied air. And I'm not even mentioning the 2 weeks he spent on the DL. Although I think I just did.

None of this is particularly enlightening; it mostly just makes me feel fuzzy about just how ridiculously good Albert is.  I s'pose you might take from this the expectation that his 2006 luck will level out a bit, and he might hit the ball even better the rest of the way.  I'm not sure how expectations for Pujols could be any higher, but I don't doubt he could meet 'em.  As far as the MVP debate goes, I...well, I'm biased.  In any case, I doubt many voters credit BABIP or its implications about the relative contribution of luck to a player's performance, but...OK, let me just say this:  Ryan Howard's BABIP is .347.  Not helping his case.