IntroductionLuck is a fickle thing in baseball. Contemporary baseball has become understandably obsessed with both bat speed and resulting exit velocity as they both have strong, positive correlation with good batting results. Its just one small part on the industry-wide move in tracking nearly every biomechanical part of the game. But for all the unsurprising relationship between the two variables, its not hard to find times when hard hit balls go directly into a defenders glove while soft liners inexplicably find outfield grass or go for infield hits. Some of that phenomenon comes from the quality of contact, defensive ability Brandyn Garcia Jersey, and how much the defense is shifted. But sometimes its also just pure, dumb luck that comes from the vagaries of physics and the randomness of the , those competing forces balance themselves out across the marathon of a baseball season, but in the short-term, it can produce some wonky results. So Andrew Saalfrank Jersey, with that in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at which of the D-Backs have been the luckiest and unluckiest with their results as we approach the end of the first month of the season. Obviously, we cant exactly quantify luckaccolades and praise Smith has accumulated so far - especially from doubters like myself - there are some signs that the start may not be sustainable for the whole season. There is nearly a 100 point differential between his expected batting averageand his actual batting averagewith a 150 point differential between his slugging numbersdwarfs his actual ERA by nearly three runs while the batting average and slugging differentials show similar patterns. The D-Backs need Pfaadt to continue to excel while the veteran-laden rotation figures out their struggles. The UnluckyGabriel MorenoOn the other side of the spectrum from Smith and Carrolls blazing starts to the season is Lourdes Gurriel Jr who seemingly cannot buy a hit right now. Through the first three weeks of the season, Gurriel has just 15 hits, though nearly half of them were for extra with that second part though, the veteran holds a woeful.172/.194/.345 slash line to this point in the season. However Austin Pope Jersey, there are still some positive signs undergirding those putrid topline numbers as he has been the antithesis of Smiths expected differential. Gurriel owns an 80-point difference in batting averageand an 88-point difference in slugging. Across the league, those differences land Gurriel in the top 15 of the league for batting and somewhere in the middle of the pack for slugging. At the moment, he is just not making much quality contact with both a barrel % and hard-hit % just under the 50th percentile. That inability to find quality contact makes it that much more difficult to get better results with balls in play. We just have to hope that he can start to turn the ship around slowly but surely.