Greener
On The Other Side |
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BABIP VS GB/FB |
Just how much luck is involved?
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My research on BABIP has drawn me to the conclusion that pitchers with high amounts of fly balls (FB) will have lower BABIP's.
Conversely, pitchers with high amounts of ground balls (GB) will have high BABIP's.
This is because a ground ball has a much better chance of finding a hole and going for a base hit.
Let's look at the top 20 pitchers with the lowest BABIP's from 2008 who logged 140+ innings.
There were 108 pitchers who logged 140+ innings in 2008, which is enough of a sample size to analyze this kind of thing.
It turns out that 90% of the top 20 pitchers with the lowest BABIP's from 2008 were fly ball pitchers. The only ones who weren't were Tim Hudson and John Lannan.
Because Hudson and Lannan are ground ball pitchers and had some of the lower BABIP's in the majors, I'd tab them as being extremely lucky, rather than tabbing every single pitcher who had a low BABIP as being lucky.
Rich Harden and Scott Kazmir led the majors in FB ratio in 2008 to the tune of a 0.44 clip. That means that they induced fly balls 70% of the time. If fly balls are more likely to go for outs than ground balls, it would make sense of Harden and Kazmir to have lower BABIP's that most. Harden was at .244 and Kazmir was at .256. Because so many balls in play are in the air, it's unfair to say that they were lucky based on their BABIP. As they continue to get outs through the air, their respective BABIP's will always be low. That doesn't make them unlucky.
Here are some other pitchers who had a BABIP below .262 (which is considered to be lucky) and had a GB/FB ratio that exceeded 60% in favor of fly balls.
- Oliver Perez
- Todd Wellemeyer
- Scott Olsen
- Greg Smith
- Tim Wakefield
The above seven pitchers can't be devalued simply because they have low BABIP's. Their BABIP's should remain on the lower end because they induce so many fly balls.
On the other side of the coin, there are some pitchers who had low BABIP's but are primarily ground ball pitchers. It's these pitchers who should be considered lucky based on their low BABIP because such a high amount of ground balls should lead to more base hits.
- Derek Lowe
- Tim Hudson
- John Lannan
- Roy Halladay
- Paul Maholm
Manny Parra had the 7th highest BABIP in the majors at .317. He also had the a GB/GB ratio of 1.10, which broke down to 264 GB and 240 FB. I'd safely say that Parra's 1.54 WHIP will improve if he continues to split his GB and FB fairly evenly.
While BABIP is a useful stat, it needs to be used correctly and analyzed properly. It's best used in combination with other sabermetric stats because there are many deviations to BABIP, just ask Chris Young.
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COMMENTS/
CONVERSATION |
by: BrettG | date: 02/13/2009 7:27 ammission27 - The article's purpose was to knock BABIP down a few notches because I feel there is a glitch in looking at it independent of anything else. I do think Parra will improve.
DavidB - Interesting indeed. I'll look into that DIPS tidbit. However, from my experience, pitchers with an ERA far from their DIPS ERA, still regress towards the mean eventually. | by: DavidB | date: 02/12/2009 10:37 amby increase on WHIP and ERA, I mean he'll do better if the defense on ground balls are better. SO far, its seems Brewers D will be about the same. | by: DavidB | date: 02/12/2009 10:35 amInteresting fact for the pitchers who throw fly balls, there actual ERA is usually less than DIPS (i.e Peavy,Hammels). But, the ground balls pitchers like Webb Lowe, and even Parra, there DIPS is close to the ERA. If Parra's defense behind him is better, I'd say he will increase WHIP and ERA. But, he is more in line with ground ball pitchers. | by: mission27 | date: 02/11/2009 6:49 pmI don't understand...
A FB accounts for maybe 2/3 of balls in the air. The other third is LDs, which fall for a hit maybe 70% of the time. A pitcher can't control LD vs. FB which is why a groundball pitcher (like Manny Parra) is so valuable. They don't give up the high percentage LDs, and they don't give up HRs. |
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