First...BABIP:
Garko's seen his BABIP drop in each successive season from 2006 to 2009...and I can find no obvious statistical reason why this should be the case. Either the league is booking him, or he was just lucky the first couple of years and it will even out to around the .300 MLB average.
Second...Trajectories:
I see no trend in his grounders or flyballs or even his HR/Fly (though he was a little unlucky in 2008 in that regard). I see a steady climb in LD% that would have continued in 2009 prior to his move to the NL. He's hitting the ball either harder or at least on a more level plane. The result should be an increasing BABIP, but we have not observed this. In part because he's hit into an INSANE number of infield pop-ups the last two years (BABIP of nearly zero). All statistical evidence suggests that there is essentially no correlation between pop-ups and any other skill or between pop-ups in one season and the next. It's possible that Garko, while working on his batting eye, is just hitting into some weird outs...but I don't see that continuing. Either, he gets "well" at the plate and starts attacking with gusto again...or he doesn't, and the pop-ups still go away when he goes to his pepper swing. Either way, he doesn't stirke out much at all and we should expect him to have a good solid .280 average and .300 BABIP given normal luck.
Third...Eye:
As Doc notes, his batting eye is rapidly improving...a trend that continued even in the NL. Not only is his K/BB droping (from 3-ish to less than 2), but his P/PA haven't changed - implying that he was always patient (running P/PA wel over 4.00 for his whole career in the bigs) but now he's converting that into real results (ignoring the weirdly low P/PA he had in '09 which was likely an outlier). It seems the main reason, however, for the decreased K rate and K/BB is an increase in contact percentage. His SW% and O-SW% are essentially steady, so it's not that he's getting smarter up there...just better at making contact. Still, the guy is not Jose Lopez...he works the count very well, a la Franklin Gutierrez, and we all know Zduriencik loves this type of player.
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