A week or so ago I made a FanPost about how I found that Elvis Andrus performed even better against elite pitchers than he did against the league as a whole during the 2011 season. That post can be found here: http://www.lonestarball.com/2012/4/1/2919280/which-batters-experience-success-against-elite-pitching-focus-on#storyjump
The consensus from y'all was that my study used too small of a sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions from.
Well, I expanded the study back another five years to include all regular and post season statistics from 2007-2011. Once again, I measured how each MLB player performed against the top 30 pitchers in the league during this time frame. Again, those with the top 30 FIPs were considered to be the top 30 pitchers.
What I found was that Elvis Andrus ranked 122nd in OBP against the league as a whole from 2007-2011. His line was .269/.338/.341 over 1893 PA.
Against the top 30 pitchers, however, he ranked 20th overall. His line was .309/.359/.372 over 321 PA.
That is a considerable difference. It should be noted that I only included players with over 200 PAs against the top 30 pitchers.
I made a category in my database that measured "Top 30 OBP" - OBP. Elvis ranked 3rd in this category. It showed, once again, that he performed even better against the top 30 pitchers than he did against the rest of the league.