Charlie Culberson is and isn’t doing it again

Ben Ludeman-USA TODAY SportsAbout a year ago, I wrote about the ridiculous, in-progress occurrence that was Charlie Culberson’s 2018 season (see here: https://www.talkingchop.com/2018/8/27/17783348/charlie-culberson-mockery-xwoba-statcast-atlanta-braves). At the time that post went up, Culberson was, by comparison of his wOBA and xwOBA marks, the luckiest player in baseball. Through 250 PAs, he managed a very good .359 wOBA on the basis of a quite bad .282 xwOBA. Over the season’s final month, his xwOBA and wOBA both fell, and the gap got a little smaller — he had an .077 gap in late August, and ended at .065. Not that it mattered, though: the .065 mark was still the luckiest such occurrence in baseball last year; the only players with greater positive gaps between their wOBAs and xwOBAs all had fewer than 80 plate appearances all season. In addition to that, there was also the other mind-boggling aspect to Culberson’s season. I’ll just quote myself to save time:

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