There is proof that Loney has made a conscious change at the plate. Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times noted this in a recent article:

Technically, the difference is that he is ready to hit sooner, getting his front foot down quicker, allowing for better decision making and a split second of additional reaction time.

Loney has made an adjustment, and maybe that’s the reason he’s doing so well. However, correlation does not imply causation–just because he made the change and he’s doing so well doesn’t mean that the adjustment caused the improvement–and Loney also told Smith that he made the shift after looking at video from his time with the Dodgers. Of course, Loney never hit anything like this in Los Angeles, so it’s preposterous to say that Loney is on fire simply because he reverted to his old habits. With all this in mind, let’s see what the statistics tell us.

The defining stat for Loney is that an incredible 32% of his batted balls have been line drives, the top mark in the American League among qualified hitters. The issue with line drive rate, though, is that it’s an extremely subjective stat (who decides what’s a flyball and what’s a line drive?) that fluctuates quite a bit. (It tells you a lot that Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs can’t agree on players’ line drive rates and something they’re not even close to the same.) There’s a real chance that Loney’s line drive rate, even as high as it is, has a lot to do with luck. If that’s not enough evidence that Loney has been fortunate this season, we go to BAbip.

Loney’s BAbip on the season is a ridiculous .404, second among qualified American League hitters and miles higher than the .296 AL average and his .308 career mark. What’s very interesting, though, is how that BAbip is broken up by batted ball type. The league average BAbips for groundballs is .239 and it’s .112 for flyballs and .691 for line drives. For Loney this season, his BAbip on groundballs is .314, his BAbip on flyballs is .101 and BAbip on line drives is a ridiculous .800. The groundball number specifically stands out–how in the world could a player hit .300 on groundballs, especially without any speed? There’s also no statistical evidence that Loney’s BAbip on groundballs is anything more than luck. The probability of Loney posting a .314 BAbip on groundballs if his true mark should have been .239 is .186, well within the range of normal. If we want to go by Loney’s .223 career BAbip on groundballs instead, the probability is .097, less likely but still not statistically. Loney is getting lucky on groundballs, and if we normalize his batting average on that, his overall average would dip to .352 right off the bat.

His BAbip on line drive is an even more touchy issue, but something that makes sense logically is that if a player hits more line drives (or has more flyballs classified on line drives), his BAbip on those line drives should be lower. For Loney, it’s the exact opposite, but it might be luck again as the probability of him posting a mark as extreme as he did is .082, closer to significant but still not enough to conclude anything. If we keep Loney’s line drive the same but adjust his BAbip from .800 to the .691 average, his average would dip from that .352 mark above to .319. If his line drive goes down towards his career average, it seems like Loney’s average will just continue to dip and his hot streak right now will look like a total fluke. But really, all these stats are doing is telling us something obvious: there’s no chance that Loney will hit .376 for the season. But is there reason to suggest that he hit .320? Even if 80% of his so-called breakthrough is just statistical noise, who’s to say that he couldn’t have improved by a more reasonable 20%?

The simplest way to put it is like this: if Loney goes 109 for his next 391 (.279), he will still be hitting .300 on the season. Loney’s career average is .285 and that’s something certainly within his reach. If he goes 114 for his next 391 (.292), he will be hitting .310. A few more line drives than usual thanks to his adjustment at the plate and that .292 mark will be easily attainable as well. Obviously if Loney hits like that, he won’t be giving the Rays nearly as much production as he has given them so far this season, but if he makes just a slight improvement to what he has done in the past, he will still provide the Rays with as much production as they possibly could have asked for.

Has James Loney suddenly gone from a mediocre player to a star? Almost surely not. Has he made any real improvement? Maybe, but even if he did, it certainly isn’t anything as noticeable as this. Even if his real progress is something subtle, though, the Rays will be absolutely fine with that. Loney has rebounded from his rough 2012 to be as good as he was previously and quite possibly a little better. For just 2 million dollars and for a team in the Rays that ranked last in the American League in batting average from their first basemen last year (.209), getting a player like that is a godsend. If Loney reverts back to the hitter he was in Los Angeles from 2008 to 2011 right now, he still will have made an impact to the Rays’ success this season and given them the extra push they were missing last year that might make all the difference.

However, Loney never was able to reach the level expected of him. He flashed a bit of power periodically, hitting three home runs in the final week of 2006 during his brief callup, and hitting 15 homers in 96 games in 2007. However, that mark of 15 home runs still stands as his career high. After that point, he became a slightly above average hitter, hitting around .280 with just over 30 doubles a year from 2008 through 2011, but he really never proved capable of being more than a mediocre player.

The bottom completely fell out for Loney in 2012 as he struggled through his worst season in the majors. Traded from the disappointing Dodgers to the thoroughly dysfunctional Boston Red Sox, he combined to hit .249/.293/.336 with six home runs and 20 doubles. His OPS+ was a miserable 73. A free agent after the season, he appeared very close to being relegated to a backup role, if he could even get a major league offer.

Then along came the Rays, signing Loney to a one year deal for $2Million. At the time, very lilttle was thought of the move, aside from it being a typical Tampa Bay Rays signing – low cost and very low risk. And then, naturally, the Tampa Bay Rays magic came through, as Loney, for at least the first month and a half of the season, has started to look like the player he was expected to be.Presently, Loney is second in the American League in batting average (.376) and third in on base percentage (.432). He ranks seventh in doubles and OPS. While he only has one home run, he has been hitting the ball with authority and looking more like the player he was expected to be. What caused this transformation?

According to Loney, it may have just been a change of scenery. Speaking with Bill Chastain, he talked about finding his comfort zone with the Rays, and watching video of his swing. Perhaps he just needed to get out of the major markets, like Los Angeles and Boston, to finally reach his potential.

“I think that it’s happened for a reason, you know,” Loney said. “I think it’s great for me to be in this situation. This team. This organization. I feel like the change was good for me. I definitely feel blessed to be in this situation.”

Regardless of the reason, James Loney has become another in the growing list of Rays reclamation projects that have panned out beyond expectations. Like Jeff Keppinger and Fernando Rodney last year, the Rays appear to have worked their magic once again with a player that very few held in any regard. Will his resurgence continue throughout the season, or is he in the midst of a very hot month with the bat? Given the Rays track record, it may well be the former.

On Sunday at Coors Field, the Rays got off to another early lead, scoring thrice off Jhoulys Chacin in the first inning on a James Loney RBI single, a wild pitch, and a Kelly Johnson RBI single. But then Alex Cobb looked like he might be the next pitcher to blow an early lead on the way to a crushing defeat. Michael Cuddyer made it 3-1 with a solo homer in the 2nd, and then Troy Tulowitzki made it 3-2 with another home run in the 4th. But in the 6th, the Rays offense went right at Chacin and the Rockies again, scoring three more times on another RBI single by Johnson and a 2-run double by Ryan Roberts. Nolan Arenado ended Cobb’s afternoon with a third home run with 2 outs in the 6th, but the Rays bullpen was lockdown in relief of him, with Jake McGee striking out Carlos Gonzalez to end the 7th before Joel Peralta and Jamey Wright tossed shutout ball in the 8th and 9th, with Wright striking out the side in a perfect inning to finish off the Rays’ 8-3 win.

Cobb went 6.2 innings allowing 3 runs on 8 hits, striking out 6 while walking 1. He made three big mistakes, but his command was solid overall as he got 10 outs on the ground and he lit up the strike zone, throwing 71 of 107 pitches for strikes. This is what Alex Cobb can do–he’s not some ace like David Price or Matt Moore and he’s not going to dominate every time out, but he can eat innings and keep the Rays in games on a consistent basis, and that makes him a very valuable pitcher.

Ben Zobrist was out of the Rays lineup after leaving the team because of the death of his grandmother. Evan Longoria also went 0 for 4 with a walk. Usually those two being non-entities is a recipe for disaster for this Rays offense, but not this time around. James Loney raised his average to an unbelievable .398 as he went 3 for 5 with an RBI and 3 runs scored, Kelly Johnson and Ryan Roberts each went 2 for 4 with 2 RBI, and Desmond Jennings had 2 hits while Jose Lobaton had 2 RBI. Overall, the Rays went 5 for 10 with runners in scoring position, stranding just 4 runners on base all game. Despite the fact that the Rockies out-homered them 3-0, the Rays found a way to push runs across and refused to let a game that seemed very losable the way they have been playing slip away again.

The Rays hope to take the momentum from their series win versus the Rockies back with them as they head to Tropicana Field to take on the Toronto Blue Jays. Jeremy Hellickson takes on Mark Buehrle in the opener at 7:10 PM on Monday night to start a 4-game series with Toronto and a 10-game homestand. The Rays hope that by the end of that stretch, their season outlook will be completely different than it has been lately.