Can someone explain BABIP?

[SOUTHSIDE HITMEN]

Can someone tell me what this is and is a high or low BABIP good?

[flloyd]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BABIP

[AquaMan2342]

It's an indicator of luck. BABIP means that when X player is putting the ball in play, that's his batting average. If it's high, you should expect his true batting average to decrease over time, and vice versa.

[SOUTHSIDE HITMEN]

Thanks Fllyod anand Aquaman.

[Yoda]

Also need to be careful when looking at BABIP. Generally better pitchers have lower BABIP overall and better contact hitters have higher BABIP. I rarely use it for hitters but use it for pitchers who have a ridiculously low BABIP like low .200s or something.

I also think that pitchers have much more control over BABIP. For instance, If you throw the same pitch at the same location to two different hitters then you will have two completely different results based on their skill.

[SOUTHSIDE HITMEN]

Thanks Yoda that's what I was looking for. The lower the # the better. Thanks good info to use for trading P that you can sell high and buy low.

[Von Hayes]

I'm just starting to learn it myself, so forgive me if I make a mistake here and there. I've found that it's a stat that is used to try to identify if a player is getting lucky or unlucky. Basically it identifies what percentage of balls hit in play result in hits.

From what I understand, the MLB average is somewhere between .290 and .300. Really good hitters like Manny seem to be able to control where they hit the ball and have career averages closer to .350, so BABIP isn't as good of a predictor for hitters. Pitchers don't seem to be able to control where a ball is hit in play and both the great and the crappy pitchers all seem to be within the .290 to .300 range, so BABIP is a better stat to use when analyzing pitchers.

So, let's use Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia, and Edinson Volquez for examples:

Lee's BABIP is currently .224, which is much lower than the normal range. That means hitters are only hitting .224 against him when they put a ball in play. Based on normal BABIP, the law of averages would say that Lee is getting lucky and soon that .224 is going to go up, which means more batted balls are going to turn into hits instead of outs.

Sabathia's BABIP is currently .379, which is much higher than normal and means that he is getting unlucky and soon more of those batted balls are going to result in outs, not hits.

Volquez's BABIP is currently .287, which is pretty close to the normal range and means that he appears to be neither luck or unlucky, but right where he should be.

That's my take.

[interchange]

BABIP is batting average for ABs that aren't K, BB, or HR. In general, BABIP is pretty consistent for all players in the majors. Thus, when there is a hot player out there with a very high BABIP expect a regression. When there is a cold player with very low BABIP, expect him to turn it around.

The stat isn't perfect, though. LDs are more likely to go for base hits, so someone with a high-ish BABIP with a high LD% is really just hitting the ball well instead of receiving luck. Also, BABIP for speedy guys can be higher since they can leg out GBs.

[noseeum]

BABIP is batting average for ABs that aren't K, BB, or HR. In general, BABIP is pretty consistent for all players in the majors. Thus, when there is a hot player out there with a very high BABIP expect a regression.

Unless he has 80 home runs of course.

[Spartans Rule]

The whole BABIP thing started when a guy named Voros McCracken was messing around studying pitcher's stats and noticed that pitchers seemed to have very little control over BABIP allowed.

Now why anyone decided to extend this to hitters, I have no idea. To say that pitchers don't have much control over hit rates on balls in play is a little counterintuitive, but starts to make sense when you look at the whole picture of pitching stats. To say that hitters can't control average on balls in play is just nonsense. Hitting ability and running speed are both big factors in hitter BABIP.