Justin Masterson

[jake_twothousandfive]

Naturally BABIP will rise as the denominator in the formula used in it's calculation falls (see Randy Johnson from 1998-2002; when he recorded 300+ Ks each season). So his high K/9 is working against him here

This is just plain untrue. Every K you get both adds and subtracts a "1" to the denominator in the form of +1 AB and -1 K. The net result is no change to the BABIP. If anything, a higher K/9 would mean that batters aren't squaring the ball up very well and would probably lead to a lower BABIP. I haven't run the numbers but I'm quite certain that a high K/9 would correlate to a lower BABIP.

It's calculated differently for pitchers than for hitters.

Also, HR/FB% isn't really indicative of luck.

It's more within the pitcher's control than BABIP is, but that doesn't meant here isn't an element of luck in high/low outliers. It's very useful to look at this stat to see if an inordinate amount of fly balls are leaving the yard, because HRs have such a huge effect on ERA. Over time the hitters that you allow fly balls to will normalize to league average power hitters, whereas he might have given up a lot of fly balls to power hitters while the weak hitters got a bunch of grounders. Or vice versa.

Like I alluded to earlier most of this is small sample size. This ratio just isn't very telling right now. To me 4 HRs really doesn't indicate a lot of bad luck to this point. If several months into the season a pitcher has a HR/FB% significantly above his career average (or league average) it may suggest that he's being somewhat unlucky (or just that he's being hit harder). I just don't think you can really use this to prove that he has been very unlucky to this point and that things are likely to change drastically in the near future.

[Skin Blues]

It's the same stat for hitters and pitchers. A strikeout isn't even a ball in play, so how on earth does that affect Batting Average on Balls in Play?

EDIT: I ran the numbers for 2008 and 2009. Despite no direct relationship, a higher K/9 does have a correlation to a higher BABIP, albeit an extremely weak one. This is mostly affected by the guys on the lower end of the K/9 spectrum having slightly lower than average BABIPs. The reason for this, I assume, is the guys with low K/9 making themselves useful by inducing a ton of ground balls.