Hey, this is about Eric Byrnes - what's Pujols have to do with him? Well, read on.

If you don’t watch a lot of Arizona Diamondbacks games, you probably haven’t noticed this, but Eric Byrnes hits a lot of pop-ups. There are few things more frustrating for a baseball fan than watching a player on their favorite team pop up weakly to shortstop. You wouldn’t normally associate a player who pops up all the time with a valuable hitter, and most of the time, you’d be right. Unless you were talking about Eric Byrnes.

The wonderful folks at FanGraphs (www.fangraphs.com) provide data on the percentage of all fly balls that don’t leave the infield. Infield fly balls are abbreviated IFFB%, a mouthful of an acronym that represents the formula [infield fly balls / total fly balls]. This number is listed as a percentage of all fly balls – not all balls in play – an important consideration when looking at the numbers. During the 2006 season, Byrnes led the major leagues in IFFB% with a whopping 24.8 percent of his fly balls failing to reach the outfield. The player ranked second – Jeff Francoeur – kept only 20 percent of his fly balls in the infield. That might not seem like a huge difference, but remember, 20 percent is only 4/5 of 25 percent. The rest of the players in the top five were not particularly productive hitters: Jose Lopez, Juan Encarnacion, and Yuniesky Betancourt.

You might think that Byrnes and Francoeur don’t necessarily belong in a group of unproductive players such as this, and you might be right. The rest of the top 10 consists of: Adam Everett, Omar Vizquel, David Bell, Jack Wilson and Pedro Feliz. Of course, numbers 10 through 15 include Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman, so it seems like it’s okay to rank high on the list, but not too high. Was it a fluke for Byrnes to appear atop the list? Apparently it was not.

Here is a list of the top five players in IFFB% for 2007 (through games of 8/21/07): Byrnes, Feliz, Juan Uribe, Edwin Encarnacion, and Craig Biggio. Byrnes actually holds a lead of almost 50% over the second place player – Byrnes checks in at 27.1% and Feliz ranks second with 18.8%. Numbers six through ten include a pair of disappointments (Vernon Wells and Lance Berkman) as well as Mark Ellis, Luis Gonzalez, and Jose Lopez. Clearly this is not the kind of company that Byrnes should be trying to keep, but this is the second straight year that he has been a solid performer in spite of his pop-up tendencies. What gives?

Part of Byrnes’ survival plan seems to be a tendency to hit a lot of fly balls. Among the top 10 IFFB% players in 2007, Byrnes has the third-best fly ball ratio (0.80 groundballs per fly ball), and among the top 10 players in 2006, Byrnes had the best fly ball ratio (0.86 ground balls per fly ball). It stands to reason that Byrnes can afford to “waste” a few more fly balls than Jack Wilson (1.51 groundballs per fly ball) since he is hitting more.

Plate discipline might be another distinguishing factor for Byrnes – at least in 2007, his walk rate of 8.9% is significantly higher than the other players on this list. In fact, other than Berkman and Gonzalez, these two lists are almost a who’s who of impatient hitters. Berkman has had a high IFFB% for the last three seasons, but he was in a more normal range before that, so it seems likely that he has changed his swing by introducing more uppercut. Even though this doesn’t really show up in his GB/FB numbers, the IFFB% seems to support this conclusion.

Still, what does this mean for Byrnes? Fantasy players never want to see their star player on a list of lousy hitters, so can Byrnes keep it up or is he doomed to follow the career path of Juan Encarnacion? Given his inflated IFFB% numbers in 2004-2005 as well as his high ranking for the last two years, it seems likely that Byrnes has always had an uppercut in his swing – probably an attempt to maximize his modest power (at least his perception of modest power). His HR/FB% peaked last season when he was 30 years old, and remains relatively high this year.
Given the research of Bill James and others that predicts power peaks for players in their early 30s, it seems likely that Byrnes’ approach has not changed, but he has finally developed the ability to make it work. He will turn 32 prior to next season, and probably has one or two more years of his “natural” power peak left. He could always go the Barry Bonds route to extend that peak, but if he doesn’t, the Diamondbacks might be regretting the third year of the three-year extension that they just gave Byrnes. Of course, he seems like a fairly good bet to succeed for the first two years of the contract, and Arizona would probably settle for that.

Questions and comments may be sent to johnfranco@sportsgrumblings.com