But on the pitcher side I think they all allow close to .300. I believe Warren Spahn is an example of a guy with a consistently lower than normal BABIP against.

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JOOR, if you are a coach and Pujols is comng to bat and you see Pujols has grounded out to the LF side 25 times this year and NONE to the right side. And NONE even up the middle. Are you leaving the 2B in his normal position?

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/player/albert-pujols/hitchart/85809?q=albert-pujols

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Another, Freddie Freeman, not one ground ball to the left side this year. So the Cubs played Castro behind 2nd the whole series. 2 big outs on grounders up the middle that are probably singles otherwise.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/player/freddie-freeman/hitchart/745177?q=freddie-freeman

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I don't listen to Bernstein regularly by any means. My gut tells me that he uses SABR-like stats because it reinforces his narrative of being an "intelligent fan". In all reality, the advanced stats lie as often as the traditional ones- except that the old school fan is less likely to understand them well enough to refute whatever rhetoric Bernstein is spewing.

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Well, it's pretty hard to dispute stats in general. That is, unless your using other stats. The benefit Bernstein has is that "the guy who watches every game" will never have better evidence than what the stats suggest.

Matt Cain comes to mind- a guy with flyball tendencies that somehow limits HRs [ATT Park effect?]. Cain's career BABIP is .262 and has never exceeding .297 in any season.

I suspect that Spahn may have also thrown a fair amount of high fastballs- balls that are outright whiffed, or hit weekly in the air. Some of that high heat is bound to leave the yard. Fortunately for Warren( and Cain), a home run is not considered a "ball in play".

Whatever the reasons, these new stats are just a way to look at the game through a different lens. Matt Cain has a career W-L of 70-75, he can probably thank SABRmetrics at least a bit, for his recent $20M+ extension.

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I'm not convinced that batted balls are random.

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They aren't. Ironically, one of the unwritten canons of SABRmetrics is taking the "randomness" out of the game by attempting to understand the effectiveness of certain players by using new rate-based metrics and traditional "counting" stats alike.

Ichiro Suzuki is probably a HOF singles hitter, and has been lauded by even traditional scouts as a guy lauded for his uncanny ability to loft sand-wedge like bloops just over the infield. Last year he hit .272, by far his worst year in MLB. His BABIP of.295 would be considered league average, but was easily the lowest of his career.

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

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My understanding is that BABIP is very consistent across pitchers (hence the great interest in studying fielder-independent pitching) but can vary widely among batters. In other words, the standard deviation is higher for batters.

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Yeah, that's what I thought. The thing is, I can't believe that a guy like Buehrle was "lucky" enough to face the minimum twice with average defenses behind him and a relatively low number of strikeouts in each game. I have to conclude that, at least within the space of those two games, Buehrle was having a greater than normal effect on where balls were hit, thus, the possibility exists for a pitcher to do so over a career even if it has never really occurred in practice.

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No. Greg Maddux was not that good.

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Interesting enough, Maddux was the basis for some of the crazy conclusions to which Voros McCracken immediately leaped based upon rather incomplete research he did while pioneering fielder independent pitching statistics.

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Not so fast. I dont wanna come off like a Bernstein. I try and keep up with these numbers and all the updates but im no expert on them overall. Most of the guys who do that for a job cant even be called experts. Its kind of a new-ish frontier




Yeah, I believe it refers to the league overall with some exceptions. I think I wrote earleir, without looking it up Id have to guess Rivera's BAPIP is lower than most.

Sometimes these numbers conflict though.

I mean, if BAPIP averages out to 290-300 doesnt that suggest that making contact should be viewed as a good thing and strikeouts significantly worse?

But when you research it, the numbers bear out that the difference between strikeout and batted ball out, in terms of what leads to runs scored is so infinitesimal, that really there is no difference between the two.


We know way more now that we did 20 years ago, and in 10 years it will be the same

Dont be silly


There is no dispute that a pitcher can affect how hard the ball is hit. Maddux and Buehrle are guys that lived on making guys pop up or hit something in a zone that was bad for the hitter.

That is the beauty of well hit ball ratiio and line drive percentage!