I don't want to throw my man kuri under the bus, but this morning he mentioned luck, Arod and BABIP.
This stirred up the usual tempest in a tea-cup, so I feel like I should throw my 2 cents in.
BABIP is secondary stat- it's calculated (H-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF).
And as stats go, to me, BABIP is only useful in the context of a players Line Drive, Ground Ball and Fly Ball percentages. There is a hugely powerful correlation between LD% and BABIP. We expect BABIP to be roughly LD+.120. Now, guys like Ichiro play a different kind of baseball, which is why every year CHONE and other projection systems think he'll collapse into a .250 hitter, and every year he beats the system. But for 99% of the human being who hit white spheres for a living, this is true.
Arod's low LD% is a concern to me. He's posted a 15.3% LD this year, so we'd expect a .273 BABIP, which nearly hits his .275 mark on the nose.
It's not bad luck. He's not hitting the ball hard. He's hitting a ton of fly balls, and while fly balls will occasionally leave the yard, nearly 11% of Arod's fly balls haven't left the infield (his career mark is 6%).
Is this a Small Sample Size blip, or is this the Arod we'll watch for the next several years? I don't have the answer, but what I see worries me for the long-term.