Ian Happ's Batted Ball Data Never Lied to Us - His Slash Line Did

Right now, optimism is in spare supply here in Cub-land, I know. The Brewers seem like they may never lose again, the Cubs offense hasn't been quite as dominating as they had been early in the year, the deadline brought little excitement (and with Michael Soroka's injury, more disappointment than intended); it's just pretty easy to see the negatives right now. With that said, let me offer up some good news; Ian Happ is fine and seems to be the guy we want him to be once again. In fact, he's been fine for a while, though the stats lied to you for a while. They played a rude trick on us, so let's figure out just how they did it, and hopefully, how to prevent this from happening again.

To begin to pull the curtains back on Happ's data, we need to take a quick journey to the recent past before we jump to look at the current day Happ; back to just a few weeks ago. The Wrigley Wire, a Twitter/X account, had a post that found a decent amount of traction, making enough waves across the internet that it appeared in a very popular reddit post and even on our own North Side Baseball forums. The tweet consisted of a breakdown of Ian Happ's recent games. showing his poor slash lines over a handful of of different time spans.

These numbers caused a lot of ruckus in these circles and people got their pitchforks out directing even more ire towards the Cubs left fielder. I've noticed over the years, Happ tends to be a bit of a lightening rod for Cubs fans, which is likely why this tweet caught fire in social media circles. My theory on this is that he's just not very flashy; he's a good hitter, but just "good". He's a good (for a left fielder) glove man, but doesn't make a lot of  flashy or notable "web-gems". He's a good base runner, but not a speed demon. And because of these good-not-great skills, his skills in the aggregate can be easy to sleep on. Many probably don't realize that since 2022, he's accrued the 12th most fWAR in the league at the OF positions (more than Fernando Tatis Jr., Mike Trout, Byron Buxton, Cody Bellinger and Michael Harris II). He's almost always available, and he's incredibly consistent. 

Getting back to the original tweet, it's important to note that while the above numbers as posted by the Wrigley Wire are accurate, they lack context. Slash lines just report back to us what happened, but never tell us the process behind how we got there and that process is the key to unlocking the lie; it's in the process that we can better tell the future. I know that feels counterintuitive to us and that his "results" (or in other words, his triple-slash-line) matter, but in a way, they don't help us predict the future very well. You can think of it this way: If I flip a coin ten times and get seven heads, it doesn't mean that the 11th time I flip it, I suddenly have a 70% chance of getting heads—it's still 50%. The results don't inform the next flip. But, if I was using a specific way to flip the coin that was resulting in more heads, now that would inform the next flip. The way we do things matters more than results in this case, and they do for the protagonist of our article, as well.

To add some of that context to Happ's numbers, I've compiled a chart looking beyond just his triple-slash lines to attempt to diagnose the issues Happ had been having. Is he making bad swing choices? Is it a mechanical error? Maybe his contact quality has dropped off? To get there, we have to go to the predictive portion of his numbers, his processes, his batted ball data, and his approach. And when those curtains were peeled back, the trick had been revealed; Ian Happ was having a good season.

Compared to his career line, nothing over that 37 game strand suggests an issue, instead he was playing better than normal Ian Happ plays! He was making more contact and chasing less, so it wasn't an approach issue where he was swinging at poor pitches. He was also making more hard contact, had better exit velocities, and was finding more barrels than normal, so his batted ball quality wasn't an issue. He wasn't inflating his hard-hit% or his exit velocities with hard ground balls that were unlikely to land as hits. He was hitting more fly balls and converting more of those into home runs, suggesting his power was just fine. Then, you get to the BABIP... a nearly .120 split between his career BABIP and his BABIP over that span. Ta-da! The ruse has been revealed, it was bad luck all along! 

I know, I know, the "it was bad luck" explanation is the equivalent of the magician's gimmicked prop failing in real time in front of the audience, but sometimes, it really is just bad luck. Happ had the fourth lowest BABIP in that 37-game span of any hitter in baseball and he hadn't been playing like a guy who deserved that outcome. Had he been making poor contact, you could convince me that the low BABIP numbers were earned, but this felt like bad variance. What Ian Happ was doing should have matched his production. 

In a way, you could even argue that Ian Happ was having one of his best seasons ever from an expected data point of view. Between 2022 and present, his wOBA over that span is .337. Despite his wOBA this season only being .319, his expected wOBA is .350, the second-best figure of his career. There were always enough signs that Happ was playing pretty well, but because we tend to live in a results-driven world, it was sometimes hard to see.  

This brings us to the All-Star Break and beyond. Over his last 70 PA's, Happ has posted a 134 wRC+. The 30-year-old-left-fielder has a 121 wRC+ from 2022-2024, so this is a great start for him on the second half of the year. When I add his current batted ball data into the chart, it becomes a little obvious that he's probably playing a bit better than we should expect moving forward; he's making a little more contact than normal and finding a few more barrels, but he's also very close on a lot of his career numbers, too. 

This feels like a great lesson in context. I don't mean to sound holier-than-thou here—we can all get caught up in the moment and I have been guilty of it myself—but context matters. Happ's batted ball data was trying to tell us not to panic, that as long as Ian Happ kept doing what he was doing, he'd probably be the guy he's been. And, go figure, his triple-slash "results" (though, to be fair, his exit velocities, barrels, and the like are all results in their own right, though that is an argument for another article) are matching the batted ball data again. It's easy to focus on the results, and it's a lot harder to go deeper into the "why", but this is what good organizations do—they ignore the noise. As fans, we have more access to these things than ever ourselves, and doing the hard thing can help inform us. 

Right now, everything feels gross and doing that probably feels harder than ever. Nothing feels right on the North Side and Milwaukee feels like they are going to run away with the division. There's still a lot of baseball left to play and there's a lot of time to change that. But, if we can leave the crushing pessimism in the bag for a minute, we can see that things with Ian Happ are starting to balance back out. Sometimes the data lies to us; it performs magic tricks and we have to look deeper to find how the trick is performed. Sometimes, it really is just a streak of bad beats.

As the Cubs look to put things together over the next few weeks, Ian Happ's "resurgence" (though I'd argue he's been fine for a while) will certainly help. If the Cubs can get a few other hitters back (like Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch) the team will be able to give the Brewers hell down the stretch. Maybe, just maybe, if the Cubs' oft-maligned left fielder can get the results he deserves (or even a little positive luck!) he will be seen as a catalyst over the next two months instead of an anchor. Don't let the volatility trick you, Ian Happ is a great player. He might never be Juan Soto, but he doesn't have to be; he just needs to be Ian Happ to be enough. 

What do you think of Ian Happ's 2025 season? Do you think he has had a good season? Let us know in the comment section below!