On May 15th, the Indians record sat at 12-21 and were a season high nine games below .500. They had just landed in Arlington, TX to begin a tough seven game road trip which concluded with a stop on the south side of Chicago to play the division rival White Sox in four games. Prior to this date, they already had a “players only” meeting and Terry Francona had to answer the media’s questions about why the club was underachieving.
They only won two games in a row once, the final two games of the opening series in Houston against the Astros. In fact, that was the last series they won. They split a two and a four game series in the process but not enough to move the needle any in the win-loss record.
Although they could not gain momentum enough to win a few games in a row, they also were not bad enough to lose many games in a row, either. Their longest losing streak was only four games and this allowed them to not get buried in the standings early.
Coupled with the fact that both the Royals and Tigers got off to hot starts, the perception that the Indians were destined to a mediocre season was justified. They were not hitting, blowing leads late and making errors around the same rate they were last season.
However, things got noticeably better on that aforementioned road trip. A strange and foreign thing called “winning with consistency” started to happen out of nowhere. Since the 15th, the Indians went on a six-game winning streak and won eight of twelve. The entire month of May has been kind to the team as they have gone 13-11- an improvement on the 7-14 record on the month of April.
Statistically speaking, it was not that big of a surprise if you dig deep down into what the numbers were telling us from the start. The recent 6-game winning streak was actually a course correction that happens in a 162 game schedule- it levels out times when a team plays both better and worse than what they actually are. Most importantly, the recent winning ways has revealed some important statistical facts about the team.
Over the last 14 days, the Indians have a .283 BABIP, which is only 1 percentage point better than their 2015 overall .282 BABIP. However, this marks an improvement over their .268 BABIP in the month a April, when they were tied as the fourth unluckiest team in baseball for the month.
What explains this?
Their line-drive percentage has not changed over that span, 22% in April and 21% over the past 14 days. The rate at which they hit home-runs also went down: 8.7% down from the 10.1% in April.
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