Baseball Professor | 23 Step Two: Hitting Sabermetrics By: George Fitopoulos To many, the word "sabermetric” inspires fear end confu- Sion because ts uncharted terry. But fear not! Were hereto sit trough the numbers and break them down for you 1s what we Sebermetics dort just aply to hiters, but that's where we're going to start As you know, tere are dozens af diferent stats you {an look at to analyze hiters, but why ave yourse the headache? We've handpicked the important enes that you can use to identity ‘those tricky buylow/sel-high cand dates ‘Wien tht si, le’s meet our st frend Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) AABIP could be the mast misunderstood ané misused base- bal statistic. 105 widely used as a barometer for how lucky a hitter has been, but be careful because GABIP on its av does not tll the fll story. Before we further cssect the stat, hee i how its caleuate: H-HR BABIP AB-—K-—HR+SF ‘Simply put, BABIP isthe rate of balls putin the Feld of play that fll for a it. The league average tends to hover between .290- 300 each year, but it isn't right to assume that anyone who has 3 BBABIP above league average lucky or vice versa. Tere are mary factors that Influence a player's BABIP. Here are the two most m= poreant: * Speed: Fastar players tend to have higher BABIPs because they create more stations where they get on base—the biggest being inf is. The league average BABIP in 2011 was. 297, out the average BABIP of batters wih a least 25 steals (the fast guys) was 312, + Type of Contact: The typeof contact has a huge impact on ether a ball falls for a hit ar not, In 2012, the bang average of Tine drives was 680 while ground balls (.234) and fly balls 224) were sionicarty lower. Als, the league average lne-rive rate was 20.9 percent. There were 31 players who had Inedeve rates st three percentage pants Ngher, 23.9 percent ar beter. Their average BABIP was 325, Note: A hit’ ballpark and the quality of the epponent’s Gefense also affect a player's BABIP but not tothe same extent a5 the anes mentioned above. “This toll us that you cant look at BABIP blindly because that’s wnen you make mistakes, For exemple, told you that two players both had the same BABIP, you might assume that they were both equally hicky. But, if you dig deeper into thelr BABIPs, you righ realze that’s notte case. They say don't judge a book by ts Cover. In baseball its dont judge a player by his BABI. In 2011, Derek eter (336) and Casey Korchman (335) posted nearly identical AABIPs, Both are above league average, Dut nly one is unsustainable, This is prety obvious, but can you guess vahlch one twas? Sete: 19.0 LD%, 329 BA on fles, 252 BA on grounders, 1655 BA on Ine crives Kotchman: 18.3 LD%, .227 BA on fles,.254 BA on ground 5,625 BA an line crves Recall the league averages for batting average on each type of hit: .138 for files, .237 for grouncers, and .724 for line cries, Jeter had a cazy-high 329 average on fy bal, but his 655 aver- {age online drives was easy lower than we'd expect. Kotchman was high across the board, but his .825 average on line drives blows anything leter did out of the water. Toss n Jeter’ speed relative to Koterman's, ana you start to see why Kotchman was a bt luck, it's for times like this that we created our handy ex- pected batting average (x8A) and expected BABIP (xBABIP) tools. Based on their 2011 peripherals (speed, frequency of Tine drives/ground balls/fy bals and overall contact stats), deter had an xBABIP of .343 whereas Kotchman's was .295, That's right, Jeter should have been even better! Now that you know a itl about the stale’ take 2 lok at how to use it in terms of fantasy baseball Debunking the BABIP Myth “The most popular use for BABI is as an indicator of future performance. Unfortunately, as we stated before, the stat alone Goesn't tell the whole story. A low BABIP does't automatically ‘mean beter days are ahead, and a high BABIP can stay up there all ‘Season fe hte is mashing the ball To demonstrat tis were going to pick on poor Mark Reyn- ‘olds. In 2010, Reynolds hit for risculousty law (even fr him) 198 batting average, I you loked a his.257 BABIP and compared ito is 338 BABI ftom the previous season, you'd think Reynolds was ‘extremely unlucky. However, his BABIPS don tel the whole story, (Wore on this ate) Line-drive percentage (LD%) “This one Is simple; LOM (or line ive rate) isthe biggest factor in BABIP. As stated earl, Ine drives ten to fll for nits far ‘more often than fy balls and ereund balls. This means tat high Ine Give rats lend themselves to higher BASIPS and vice versa. If we Took at BABIP nthe context of line drive rate, we can get an ides oF wether a player ike Reynolds-and his 257 BABIP-realy was that Unlucky or if he was just that terrible. 'So, in 2009 Reynols postec @.338 BABIP despite hitting fy balls 473 percent of the tme. For the record, high fly bal rates are ot good for your BABIP because home runs are not Included inthe ‘Sat; the onl fy balls that are induded are the ones flcers can ‘make a play on. However, Reynelds als hitline eves ata medest 173 pereet clip, which helped rae hs BABIP ‘Winat changed in 2010? His Ine drive rate plummeted (13.3%) and, not coincidental, so did his BABIP (.257). So, Would you say the lower BABIP resulted from bad Iuc« or bad Skil? We're going to go with skill — or lack thereof — and we advise you do the same. By now its clear that these stats were meant to be together, just ke high school sweethears that were destined from the cay they met during fit period study hall. One stat cannot ive without the other, so way back in 2011 we comple a Ist of players who had the largest ference between BABTP and LD%, which isto say the players who benefited the most fom the least. Here are the 30, ludest ters of 2010 ané how they cid the following season: Of the 30 players withthe greatest dference between their BABIP and LD%, 24 saw their balting average drop from 2010 to 2011 and just sk saw it stay the same or go up. Overall, the group Posted a 295 average during ther lucky 2010 seasons, but just a For updated analysis visit Baseball Professor at http//wwwbaseballprof.com24 | Baseball Professor Step Two: Hitting Sabermetrics (cont) 273 average the subsequent year Now, mere often than Aa, you see a player with 2 ricios- lousY high BABIP (something over 350) you can generaly assume his batting average is going to drop. But what about the guys with BABIPs that are only a litle Figh ( 320-350)? That's where this business of looking at Ine ceive rates comes into ply, and every- thing we've said about payers with high BABIPS canbe sala of pay ers wth low BABIPs, Just invert Isolated Power (IS0) Let's tak about some power numbers, shall we? The great thing about this stasis that eliminates singles from the equa- ‘on by subtracting a hitters batting average from nis slugging per- centage. No longer do you have to worry about a iter’ lagging Percentage being influencec by those measly one-base hits When vas the lst time you looked at slugging percentage and immedi- ately thought about sinales? When you think about, the fac that Wwe use a stat that can be influenced by singles as a barometer for Power is riéeulous Lt’ start by loking at my favorite example, Zan Kinsler 2008 and 2009 seasons: Ifyou ony lookes at slugging percentage, you'd think Kinsler had more power in 2008 despite hitting 13 fewer home runs, But, iF you lok at his TSO numbers, his 235 mark in 2009 was 2 vast improvement over his 199180 in 2008, n 2009, Kinsler traded @ {00d batting average for more power, and his slugging percentage Suffered barause of, Is clear that hs 2008 slugging percentage was greatly influenced by his 319 batting average and all of the fone-base nts that wet along wth T coulé go on and on with examples similar to Kinsler, but the paint I want to drive home i that slogging percentage s@ fat inferior static to SO when measuring a batter's power ISO alone cannot tell us the whole sory of flue perfor- ‘mance, but coupled with strikeout rates and lin-crive an fy-ball Percentages, you can get a better idea of where a hitter headed. For updated analysis visit Baseball Professor at http//wwwbaseballprof.com