BABIP: (Batting Average on Balls In Play)
BABIP is literally as simple as it sounds. It's a player's batting average only calculated from at bats where the ball was put in play on the field. The formula for BABIP is:
Home Runs are exempt from the formula, as they're technically out of play. Strikeouts obviously are not taken into account, as the ball is not put into play. If a player hits a sacrifice fly in an at bat(SF), on the box score, the player is technically 0-0 for that at bat. It still counts as an at bat but it doesn't affect the batting average, so it's also subtracted. As those three results aren't taken into account, every other possible result at the plate for a hitter is determined by the defense. BABIP really in essence shows how often a player is getting on base when they make contact, and if they're doing so more or less often than is normal. A player's BABIP will likely be higher when playing against a poor defense, and will likely go down if playing against MLB's best defense as a result.
League average BABIP for hitters and against pitchers is generally about .300, and fell to .297 last year, as pitchers performed better across the league. Generally, players who have a BABIP of .280 or lower are considered to be "unlucky", while players with a BABIP higher than about .315 or .320 are considered "lucky". Pitchers with a .280 BABIP against, conversely, are generally considered "lucky", and "unlucky" if it hovers above .315 or so.
Over the past few years, The Tigers have had some pretty drastic examples of overachieving players where BABIP can be pointed to as the primary reason for/indicator of their successes; the primary examples being Austin Jackson in 2010 and Armando Galarraga in 2008.
Last season, Austin Jackson had a tremendous rookie season, playing near Gold Glove caliber defense in CF, and hitting .300 for nearly the whole season, while leading all rookies in hits. However, his astronomically high .396 BABIP shows us that he's not going to be repeating that feat. He easily had the highest BABIP in MLB, and there are a few factors to point to that explain this. First off, he is a speedy hitter, and is able to run out a lot of ground balls and bunts for singles, a la Carl Crawford. Combined in 2010, 25 of Jackson's 181 hits were infield hits, the fourth highest in baseball, and one of the highest ratios. (If you're curious, Ichiro led in infield hits). For this reason alone, his BABIP will likely always be above .300, and probably hover around at least .330 or .340, but not at the unreal level of .396. So what gives? The other proponent of Jackson's high BABIP was his astronomical rate of hitting line drives. According to The Hardball Times (thehardballtimes.com):
"Line drives are not necessarily the hardest hit balls, but they do fall for a hit around 75% of the time."Given the fact that MLB hitters hit .750 on average when hitting line drives, it makes sense that their average would rise astronomically if they hit a high amount of line drives, which Jackson did. Jackson had the third highest LD% in baseball at 24%, right behind Joe Mauer, former AL batting champ. He also hit only 48% of balls for ground balls, which is easily the lowest among the leaders in infield hits. He also hit a low amount of fly balls, 28% over the course of the year. This means that Austin maximized his probability of getting hits to about the highest level any player in MLB possibly could, and did it while hitting only four home runs.
To a speedy player with little power like Austin Jackson, flyballs are his worst enemy. His speed can't combat a popout like it can a groundout or line drive. He has a chance to run out either of those at bats and when 72% of his at bats are one of those scenarios, it's going to benefit him. Jackson has always had a high BABIP throughout his minor league career, but never consistently to this level, and it was against minor league talent, which ultimately is a level below MLB to say the least. I would expect Jackson's BABIP to remain high, but his batting average this year to drop, to around .270 or .280.
Another example was Armando Galarraga in 2008. The pitcher had a wonderful season, pitching to a 3.73 ERA and going 13-7 on the season. Many people thought that Galarraga would continue posting similar seasons, but as I explained in a previous blog post a couple years back, he was a prime candidate to regress:
Armando Galaragga is the lone pitching bright spot of last year, who benefitted from an abnormally low BABIP. His .250 BABIP against was the third lowest of any MLB starter which is a damning statistic. Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) takes strikeouts and walks out of the equation and calculates batting average solely from contact in at-bats for a hitter or against a pitcher. League average for BABIP against is .301. He is not an overpowering pitcher, throwing 90-92, and never had MLB success prior to last year. His strikeout and walk rates are completely average, and he left over 75% of his runners on base, when the league average is 70%. Even more alarming is that this .250 BABIP came with the defense of Carlos Guillen, Edgar Renteria, and Miguel Cabrera behind him. Galaragga still somehow managed to have one of the biggest fluke years in MLB last year with one of the poorer infield defensive groupings in the league behind him. I'd look for his ERA to skyrocket to around 4.25-4.5 this year, and he will be a far less effective pitcher.
As you can see, Galarraga had a lot of warning signs in 2008 to go along with his great season. He forced a career high level of ground balls, and somehow his slider was the best of any pitcher's that year according to statistics on Fangraphs.com. He hasn't ever returned to any of those rates, and since he isn't that overpowering pitcher who helps himself out with strikeouts, and actually pitches to contact, he fell back to a 5.64 ERA in '09, had a 4.49 ERA in '10, and looks to be out of the rotation altogether in 2011 now that Brad Penny has been signed.
However, BABIP isn't a solution all in itself to explain a player's down year or career season.
Let's take a look at Miguel Cabrera for example. His career BA and BABIP are set side-by-side in this chart.
As you can see, Miguel Cabrera has never had a BABIP of .300 or below, which given the above information could lead you to believe he's "lucky" at the plate. However, his consistency demonstrates otherwise. Cabrera's BABIP actually is one of the 20 highest ever over a career.
Cabrera will always have a high BABIP, mainly because he'll always hit for a high average. The elite hitters will almost always have a higher one, and vice versa for poor hitters.
To sum it up, BABIP can be a very useful statistic to help explain a struggling/overachieving season by a hitter or pitcher. It takes the defense behind a pitcher/against a hitter into account by ruling out all results where the defense doesn't factor in, which adds to the "luck" factor often associated with BABIP. Blindly saying that a player's BABIP is high so he'll regress isn't always true, so it's not a be-all, end-all statistic. However, it's a useful indicator of potential overachieving/underachieving as a whole. It helps us as fans focus in on the usual culprits of abnormal BABIPs for hitters (Line Drive %, Ground Ball %, Infield Hits, etc.) and pitchers (Left on Base %, Line Drive %, Ground Ball %, poor defense behind the pitcher, etc.), and better explain a non-elite player's career year, whether good or bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment