At first Chris Young was defying gravity.

Now, he's still defying gravity ... it's just that he doesn't depend on it anymore.

• Young is the only qualifying pitcher to have more than 50% of batted balls result in fly balls, and he's at 58%.

• Young is the only qualifying pitcher anywhere near 10% of batted balls resulting in popups (he's at 8.7%).  Second place is 5.9%.  That's 20-ish more "automatic outs" on balls-in-play than any other pitcher gets in a season.

• That's why I dubbed him "Inverse Ichiro" -- he achieves an unusual amount of success by denying singles by inducing hitters to hit into the air; Ichiro achieves an unusual amount of success by acquiring singles by hitting balls on the ground.  They are both what we'd call "outliers."

• Through mid-June, the "Inverse Ichiro" thing was all Young had going for him.

• From mid-June on, he's become (once again) a very good MLB starter AND he's still  "Inverse Ichiro" (his popup rate clicked up to 11% in July).

• This "double whammy" does not show up in stats that normalize for BABIP.  Young's BABIP-against doesn't normalize.

Full article (two parts) here.

Home page here.