Was reading something at SI that pointed me to something at The Hardball Times that suggests that recent surge notwithstanding, maybe we've been a little hard on Jason Lane.
Basically, some stathead somewhere came up with some kind of strategy to remove the luck component from a player's stats. It's called Predicted On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage or PrOPS, and the idea is to make sure that the guys who are repeatedly lining out into the third baseman's glove get some respect.
From there, if you subtract a player's true OPS from his PrOPS, you then get a rough idea how "lucky"--or "unlucky"--a player has been.
And guess what? Jason Lane has been the fourth unluckiest offensive player in all of baseball so far.
While Jason OPSed .815 last year, and has a .756 so far this year, the stat people say he's hit the ball hard enough to have an .896.
| YEAR | PA | BB | K | K/PA | BB/PA |
| 2004 | 156 | 16 | 33 | .212 | .103 |
| 2005 | 561 | 32 | 105 | .187 | .057 |
| 2006 | 221 | 38 | 40 | .181 | .172 |