Convince me. . .
by SoCalSoxFan on Feb 16, 2010 2:46 PM EST
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John's post definitely started some debate on the use of advanced sabermetrics in baseball. I don't really use a lot of the more advanced stats, and I guess I'm wondering which stats most of ya'll use, and why I should pay more attention to them. I hear a lot of you stating BABIP and WAR etc, and I guess these don't mean much to me. So here is your chance to explain what advanced metrics you are into, explain the metric and how you use it and why I should pay more attention to it. . . .
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BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is a metric that shows how many balls put in play (excluding homeruns) fall for hits. It’s relevant because it can be an indicator of how lucky or unlucky a player has been at the plate. High BABIP’s can indicate a likelihood for regression, which could mean the player’s actual results might have just been the result of good luck. It also works inversely; players with very low BABIP might be due for an increase in production and could just be the victim of bad luck.
The very bad man who traded my first son non-tendered my replacement son. F*ck you Brian Sabean. Leave my children alone.
then what
is an average babip ? It also seems this stat gets tweaked or skewed a bit too, if the writer wants a guy to seem better or worse, he blames the lack of quality defense in the minors causes a high or low babip. . .
seems
like taking out HR’s would inflate a power hitters Babip, especially a “three outcomes” type of guy. . .
it would deflate it actually
That’s the point. BABIP isn’t really a performance measuring stat. It’s more intended to determine whether or not luck (or good/bad defense) was a significant factor in helping or hurting a player’s results. You throw out homers because defense doesn’t affect them.
The very bad man who traded my first son non-tendered my replacement son. F*ck you Brian Sabean. Leave my children alone.
Average BABIP varies from player to player. Players usually tend to stay around their own career levels. Usually that’s somewhere around .300-.330. As far as the bad defense in the minors thing goes, I don’t know if there’s any legitimate evidence to support that. But in theory, if there really was bad defense in the minors, that would cause higher BABIP’s because more balls in play would fall for hits.
The very bad man who traded my first son non-tendered my replacement son. F*ck you Brian Sabean. Leave my children alone.
There was a fantastic recent article by Bryan Smith
posted on Fangraphs that discusses this.
DER in the majors tends to float around .69 (DER + BABIP = 1), and varied in the minors last year between ~.635 and ~.670. The average Division I BABIP in 2008 was .383!
I don't know how useful knowing that is
I think BABIP is best for explaining upsurges or downsurges in a player’s statistics. Players have better and worse statistics all the time, but if a hitter’s upsurge was primarily BABIP-based, that suggests it might not be real. On the other hand, if a player spikes without significant BABIP-help, then that suggests that it could be big
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by OldProspects on Feb 16, 2010 7:32 PM EST up reply actions
Where to start....
BABIP is the average on balls in play (non HR’s, foul balls that aren’t turned into outs). The major league average for the league has fallen within the range of .295-.305 for as many years as you want to go back (several outliers in there that dip into the low .280’s, but still). Pitchers have been shown, at least at the major league level, to have very little control over their BABIP. It fluctuates from year to year. League average is around that .300 mark, but in a given season some guys will be at .260 and others at .330. Most of the time that is due to simple luck. Guys that just don’t have MLB stuff could stay at that .330 mark because they aren’t MLB talent, but those guys don’t last long anyways. When you see a guy way above or way below that .300 mark, its expected that their BABIP will move the other way in the following season as long as they keep similar stuff. That is why you should pay attention to it. If a guy has a great season but posts a BABIP of .260, the odds are greatly against them of repeating that season as guys don’t repeat that level of BABIP in back to back years (starters especially). Likewise guys who have ‘bad’ seasons but have a BABIP well over .300 are likely to find themselves having a better season the next year as they are not likely to repeat such a high BABIP as long as they keep their stuff similar.
With hitters, they tend to have more control over their BABIP. In part due to speed and in part due to hitting ability (more line drives will likely lead to a higher BABIP). Guys who are below that .300 line should be expected to come closer to it the next season (except for perhaps really slow players who won’t get the benefit of a few extra infield singles). While guys who are well over say .320 are probably going to see their production fall off some as long as their peripherals remain similar (HR rate, K rate and BB rate). Joey Votto is a guy I expect that to happen to. His BABIP was over .370 last season. While he is a good hitter, his BABIP was much higher than expected based on hit types and he should regress in terms of BABIP next season.
As far as WAR goes, with minor leaguers it means very little because it doesn’t actually exist for them. What it does do though is negate park effects for hitters and pitchers and it eliminates the luck factor. It gives us a much better idea of how players actual values stack up against one another when accounting for position played, defense at that position and the home park they played in, or for pitchers the park that they pitched in and the defense behind them.
I use a lot of stats, and its really too many to get into at this juncture, but I wanted to give a little more insight into those two specifically since you brought them up.
I don't totally buy this
BABIP because I don’t think you have any way of knowing how much of this is luck and how much is just being good. For instance, if you have a high batting average overall, then your babip is going to be higher as well because you are getting more hits. How can you say how much of this is due to luck?
I don’t think your argument that having a high babip season means you were lucky, therefore the next season it should go down, carries any weight at all. How can you tell this less luck as opposed to simple regression to the mean. You have a good season, there is a better chance you have a worse one next season. That’s how probability works.
Babip, to me, sounds like a good idea, but I don’t know if its statistical usefulness is anywhere near where people claim it is. There’s just no way to assess how much of it is luck. Maybe if it captured near catches.
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 3:28 PM EST up reply actions
agree
according to them guys like tony gwynn and wade boggs weren’t good, they were just extremely lucky for 20 years!
You could say that...
but it would only show that you have zero understanding of how the numbers actually work.
Gwynn had a .345 BABIP for his career, Boggs a .348 BABIP. While high, those numbers aren’t unreasonable for hitters who undoubtedly had elite LD% numbers, ran well (in Gywnn’s case), and rarely put the ball up in the air.
Yeah, except the OP asked some good questions and wants real information
And the snarky sarcasm in this situation might be taken by the OP as an actual argument being made by those who see the value in BABIP.
www.zekeishungry.com
by thejd44 on Feb 17, 2010 1:02 AM EST up reply actions
Or you missed the point entirely
That players can control their BABIP to certain extents. Guys with high line drive rates are going to have high BABIP’s. Boggs and Gwynn were two of the best line drive hitters ever. its no doubt they had a high BABIP. Toss in that Boggs played in Fenway where normal routine fly balls elsewhere are now doubles off the wall and his rates played up as well (.372 BABIP at home, .316 on the road for his career) and while playing at home he was a superstar. On the road he was merely good.
Semantics
“How can you tell this less luck as opposed to simple regression to the mean. "
These two terms are being used to describe the exact same thing – the fact that a BABIp significantly in excess of a player’s career BABIP is unlikely to be repeated the next season.
“For instance, if you have a high batting average overall, then your babip is going to be higher as well because you are getting more hits.”
The argument is that if your BA and BABIP are both in excess of your career numbers the same year, the high BABIP is driving the high BA, not the opposite.
Also, it is possible to have a high BA with a relatively low BABIP. You simply need to have a good HR:K ratio. It’s possible to havea low BA with a high BABIP as well – if you K a lot and hit very few homers.
Reviews of some great baseball sites and other cool stuff on my web magazine @ The Casual Observer
Few Comments
- “How can you tell this less luck as opposed to simple regression to the mean. You have a good season, there is a better chance you have a worse one next season. That’s how probability works.” This is really just not true – and it’s not how probabilty works. If you flip a coin 100 times and come up with heads 100 times, it does not change the probability that the next one will be heads.
- Saying avg BABIP is between .300-.330 doesn’t necessarily mean that a player’s expected BABIP is in that range. The posters above are probably saying that for simiplicity sake – but a better expected BABIP is Line Drive % + 12%. To put it simply, this is saying that you will get a hit 100% of the time when you hit a line drive and 12% of the time when you don’t. (I understand this is overly simplistic, and that you will not get a hit 100% when you hit a line drive, but this is the easiest explination). Thus, you should expect regression when a player’s BABIP is greater than their LD% + 12% and you should expect improvement when their BABIP is less than LD% + 12%. To put it another way, this is saying that the only thing a player can control is whether or not a ball is a line drive – when it is they usually get hits and when it is not they usually don’t. Obviously, this still doesn’t take into account a player’s speed – which also makes a difference in BABIP. If expected BABIP could be adjusted for speed, it would be an even stronger stat. I’m not sure if anyone has tried to do that though…
- Does anyone know if there has ever been any work into speed adjusted BABIP? I’d also be curious if anyone has looked into whether BABIP should be slightly adjusted for handedness – because I figure that a lefty should be able to have a BABIP slightly higher than a righty (they should beat out a handful of grounders per year that a similar righty would not)
response
“This is really just not true – and it’s not how probabilty works. If you flip a coin 100 times and come up with heads 100 times, it does not change the probability that the next one will be heads.”
This is not what I meant at all. Regression to the mean states that unusually high or low results are just that, unusual, so the next measurement is likely to be less extreme and thus close to the mean. so in your example, if flipped 100 coins and 75 were heads, then chances would be, in the next 100 flips, i would get fewer heads, closer to 50. Regression to the mean.
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 6:54 PM EST up reply actions
Seems like you're not getting it...
The idea is that different types of batted balls (ground balls, fly balls, and line drives) have different probabilities of landing in play for a hit. If you know the division of a player’s batted balls, you should be able to determine what his BABIP should be, minus fielding “luck”, the same way you can figure a pitcher’s FIP.
Now, obviously, some players are going to perform above or below that “true BABIP” figure in a given sample. The term “regression to the mean” in this case is describing how that performance should return to that “true BABIP” value over time (as long as the hitter’s underlying components stay the same), rather than a general mean for all hitters.
ok that’s interesting. Is there such a thing as this " f you know the division of a player’s batted balls, you should be able to determine what his BABIP should be, minus fielding ’luck’"? That makes sense to me and then it would be very telling to compare the player’s actual babip to that number to see if they are getting lucky or not. but i don’t think i’ve ever seen this. I’ve seen it compared to nothing, just presenting the babip and i’ve seen stuff like the above, comparing it to the league average, which seems largely useless to me
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 7:44 PM EST up reply actions
Re:
This is a pretty good observation. BABIP has evolved over time – in the beginning people just figured it should regress or improve to league average (the assumption at the time was that hitters had no control over any of their balls in play). However, it has progressed to where people better realize that hitters do control the balls in play – they control whether it is a LD or not (and to a lesser extent whether it is a flyball, groundball, etc.). Similarly, pitchers tend to be groundball or flyball pitchers and that has an effect on BABIP (there’s a reason certain pitchers always have lower BABIPs than others).
The statistics today have gotten progressively more complicated and I’m certainly not an expert on them. The important thing to take away is that these statistics (just like FIP) try to isolate and measure what a hitter can control. If BABIP takes a jump one year (without a subsequent increase in peripherals like LD%) it is almost certainly due to luck and will likely regress the next year.
To answer your question above, I have not seen any real work on what a hitter’s BABIP should be based on batted balls (other than the aforementioned LD% + 12% thing). That said, a reasonable argument can probably be made that a hitter’s career BABIP is as good of a comparison as any – because his career BABIP will take into account his historical tendencies. I agree that comparisons to league average are not the best – but like any statistic – it is only supposed to be an indicator. Thus, if you see a BABIP that is .350 – you should probably take another look at it. Does this player have a history of high BABIPs? Does he have a high LD% that would indicate a high BABIP? If not, he’s probably due for some regression.
It sounds like you know what you’re talking about, and I definitely appreciate you taking your time to explain this.
What seems the most illogical to me is when you someone has a good season, but someone comes along and says, well his babip was high. And that’s it – that’s all they say. The conclusion, I guess, being, that the guy was lucky. But he had a good a season, of course BABIP is going to go up. That doesn’t really add anything.
Now let’s say he said, his Babip was high but his LD% was the same as last year. Okay that means something.
But now let’s say, his Batting Average was high, but his LD% was the same as last year. that’s also meaningful.
But what does the Babip and LD% comparison tell us beyond the BA and LD% observation?
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 8:39 PM EST up reply actions
Not quite
A player having a better than normal season doesn’t mean his BABIP has to go up. Perhaps his walks went up and his strikeouts went down. For example, lets make four simple assumptions for the same player from year 1 to year 2. His BABIP stays the same. His 2B, 3B and HR rates stay the same per at bat. His strikeout rates are 17 and 20% (as calculated by K/PA) and his walk rate goes from 8% to 9.5%. The guy’s luck didn’t improve at all, but it would seem that parts of his skillset did (lower K rate, higher walk rate). Given 600 PA here is what each line would look like:
The guy with the better K and BB rates would hit .279/.353/.506, while the other guy would hit .269/.333/.492 despite having the same BABIP. The difference was simply that he was able to put more balls in play and walk a few more times, thus resulting in more singles, a higher average which led to a higher OBP and SLG. Simple improvement doesn’t mean a higher BABIP, you can boost your numbers by changing your skillset (adding power, losing strikeouts, gaining walks).
I will say this, I don’t agree with dfarth about the line drive rates. Just about everyone in baseball has a line drive rate of 18-22% year in and year out.
so what you are saying is that you can get better but it’s not necessarily reflected in babip. which means that it’s not necessarily equivalent with traditional measures.
there is no arguing with that example and that conclusion.
however, i think overall BA and babip are likely quite highly correlated. here’s the equation: hits – HR / (AB – K – HR + SF)
if you get more hits, and Ks dont change, then you are going to have a higher babip.
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 9:33 PM EST up reply actions
Well
BA and BABIP may correlate – but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can conclude about BA based on BABIP. For example, compare Pujols and R Howard. Pujols has a career .321 BABIP, 19.5 LD%, and .334 BA – Howard has a .333 BABIP, 23.3 LD%, but only .271 BA. The BA discrepancy is because Pujols walks a lot more and Ks a lot less than Howard – even though Howard has a higher BABIP.
right
they aren’t exactly the same.
developing a full understanding of what goes into babip hurts my head
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 10:39 PM EST up reply actions
howard
his babip is pumped up because he strikes out so much. he doens’t put balls in play so his denominator is lower
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 10:41 PM EST up reply actions
Cause and effect
I think you’re getting cause and effect mixed up.
BABIP stands on its own. It is dependent on just the two factors – balls in plays and hits on balls in play. It doesn’t depend on BA, it is a factor that drives BA.
BA is dependent upon BABIP, and well as HRs and Ks.
Howard’s BABIP isn’t pumped up because he strikes out so much; rather, his BA is as high as it is because his relatively high BABIP is able to rescue it a bit. Essentially, BA is a weighted average (with % of AB as the weight) of BABIP and (HR/K).
If Howard suddenly cut his Ks in half, his BABIP would stay just as “pumped up” (but with a higher resultant BA) so clearly the Ks aren’t the cause of the high BABIP.
Reviews of some great baseball sites and other cool stuff on my web magazine @ The Casual Observer
One very interesting thing about Howard's batted ball profile...
is that he doesn’t hit NEARLY as many fly balls as you’d expect. We’re conditioned to think that home run hitters put the ball up in the air all the time, but Howard’s 40.6% was good for 64th highest in baseball for 2009. And it was easily above his career average of 38%.
Howard succeeds by putting up the highest HR/F% in baseball year after year, and the force he puts behind the ball with his relatively level swing results in a lot of hard-hit line drives and long home runs.
It’s not true at all that hitters don’t have control over their LD%. There are plenty of guys who keep high LD% year after year, and it results in high BABIPs. Many HR hitters also tend to get a bump in BABIP relative to their batted ball profiles as well, because, when they do connect, they’re hitting each batted ball harder than their peers. Howard’s a great example of that fact.
Yeah
Hitters definitely have control over their LD% over the long term.
Like anything else in life, they have less control over it in the short term, due to small sample sizes.
Reviews of some great baseball sites and other cool stuff on my blog @ The Casual Observer
wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that it’s not that babip drives BA but that both are driven by another underlying variable, hits
by son.of.sourman on Feb 17, 2010 3:20 PM EST up reply actions
No
Hits include HR, so they clearly don’t drive BABIP.
If you want to say that hits on balls in play drive both, they you’d be correct. But it drives BABIP directly and drives BA indirectly (through BABIP). A begets B which begets C. A drives B and C, but B also drives C.
You can create a formula to derives BA by adding the weighted averages of BABIP and HR/FB rate. You cannot create a formula that derives (aka drives) BABIP by adding BA to anything.
If you’re still not agreeing, then feel free to go on your merry way – I’ve wasted enough ink.
Reviews of some great baseball sites and other cool stuff on my blog @ The Casual Observer
LD%
Dougdirt – I totally admit that I’m not an expert. I read the LD% + 12 thing somewhere and it has stuck with me – but I absolutely wouldn’t swear by it. That said, if an average range of BABIP is .300 – .330 (as is mentioned elsewhere in this thread) – then the 12% thing would make sense (based on your 18 – 22% average). That said, I’m totally open to new ideas.
LD% +.120
That is something that has been around for a while, but we have more data now to work with that lets us get a more accurate ‘guess’ of what BABIP should be due to the work by tons of different guys on how different types of balls in play (pop ups, line drives, fly balls, grounders, bunts) turn into hits and outs throughout the history of the game.
There are several studies/calculations on what a players BABIP should be based on batted ball types
You can see an example of one called xBABIP (expected BABIP) here:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/simple-xbabip-calculator/
I didn't think there was such a thing as regression to the mean
If a hitter hits lifetime 280 average and for the first half of 2010 he hits 300 then we would predict his average to be 290. IMO the expectation the hitter would regress to a 260 hitter just to “average” things out is false.
I do have one problem with the BABIP. Well, two actually.
One is it is supposed to be defense independent. That is why HR’s were excluded. But for some reason popups are included. Popups have a huge impact and I think should be removed or HR’s included. Not sure what I prefer.
The other is the belief that a players true talent level is fairly flat. This is one of the big assumptions used for the initial study – stating if players have control then it shouldn’t fluctuate. Their level changes all the time through skill, health, approach.
anyways, I do like to use it the way you mentioned. For outliers.
re: regression
I meant it more on the scope of a guy has a career year, better than he ever has before. there is a better chance it goes down from there than it says up or goes higher. i wouldn’t say it should go down to the league average, but towards his average for the past seasons
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 8:33 PM EST up reply actions
more importantly
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check out this. funny but cruel.
Yes, there actually is a way to know what is luck and what isn't
If it weren’t just random luck, then for the last 50 years the entire league wouldn’t have a .299 BABIP while fluctuating just .010 in either direction. When something is that strongly tied with literally millions of data points, its true.
There have been many studies done on literally millions of balls in play and one thing seems to come up, guys hit fly balls, line drives and groundballs that turn into hits at the same rate. Albert Pujols gets hits on his line drives at the same rate as Willy Taveras does. At the major league level especially, the talent level is incredibly even. Even the best of the best aren’t really getting more hits on certain types of balls in play than the worst guys (except on grounders where speed plays a difference). You can break it all down by hit types if you want to, in order to take a deeper look at it. But for example, on fly balls Joey Votto had more than DOUBLE the BABIP than the league did in 2009. That is luck. He couldn’t control where he made the ball land on those, no one can. When his BABIP goes back to his true skill level (probably around .320 or so) then his hit rate is going to fall down unless his HR rate goes up.
>
I don’t see what knowing the league’s babip tells you about any individual player. i can understand that a player might have an underlying babip, that represents how good a hitter they are. and they would also have an underlying battting average as well. but there are the same problems involved in interpreting abnormally high BAs as there are with BABIPs. Was it luck? Was it some kind of improvement? was it an injury? I don’t see how babip helps figure this out any more than BA would.
I get what you are saying about Line drives leading to more hits for all players. that makes total sense. So why don’t you measure LD rate instead of babip? that seems much more useful to me. if a player improve his LD rate, i think we could confidently say he’s getting better. and if he had the same or better LD rate while not seeing a corresponding increase in other metrics, i think we could safely say he is unlucky. what is wrong with this method?
by son.of.sourman on Feb 16, 2010 6:58 PM EST up reply actions
Agree
LD% is the important factor in all of t his – because it can be controlled by the hitter. As to the question of why people use BABIP instead of LD rate, it’s a fair point. I thinke the reason is that LD rate has only recently become an available stat whereas you can calculate BABIP by using the basic baseball stats. Also, a secondary reason is probably that LD%, FB% and GB% (and Pop % if it is available) are all components of BABIP (just LD% is the most important one). If I remember correclty, groundballs are more likely to be hits than flyballs – and Pop ups have pretty much a 0% chance of being hits. If you wanted to be very scientific, line drives >>> groundballs>flyballs>>pop ups. If you have all 4 of these stats, you could probably estimate BABIP to within a very close range.
The general rules are
line drives are hits about 72% of the time, groundballs 28% of the time and fly balls 22% of the time.
Batters generally don’t control their LD rates though.
Like everything else involving humans
You need to look at as much as possible. If a guy was hurt and we know it, then sure, that probably plays a part into things. If it were some kind of improvement we would like see it elsewhere as well. If a guy is still keeping the same iso, but is now just getting a ton of extra singles…. its probably luck because nothing suggests he is hitting the ball harder in order to boost his BABIP. BA alone doesn’t tell you much. BABIP alone tells you more, but it certainly doesn’t tell you the whole picture. No stat alone can tell you that.
As for measuring the LD rates, we do. Its all over the place if you go to the right sites for stats. However its been shown that players generally don’t control the amount of line drives they hit. They typically are accepted to control HR’s and the rate of groundballs to fly balls that they produce. In the minors that isn’t quite true because the talent level isn’t even. In the majors though we are working with a very even playing field as far as talent goes.
Lets take Albert Pujols for example. He has been the best and most consistent player in baseball since coming up. His BABIP has ranged from .294-.350 in his career. For his career he has a .317 BABIP, better than average. His line drive rate for his career has always fallen between 18-22.5% until this season when it dropped to 15.6%. A ton of players had much higher LD rates than that this year, guys not nearly as good as Pujols. He didn’t lose talent, it just happens sometimes in a given year with line drive rates. They fluctuate in that 18-22% area and every now and again go a little above or below it.
"players generally don't control the amount of line drives they hit"
This isn’t true. There’s noise in the numbers, sure. But players have plenty of control over their LD%. The problem is that the amount of true variance isn’t too much higher than the noise you see every year. That doesn’t mean there aren’t guys that consistently end up on the high and low ends of the spectrum.
Generally
Sure, select guys are a little higher/lower on the control just like everything else. 85% of baseball though falls in that 18-22% range every year.
and how much does the league batting average fluctuate?
or the league ERA?
is the league BABIP on a different stratosphere then those, if so it’s probably a valid point.
League rates
What was the leagues ERA in 1971 compared to 1999? A large difference. The BABIP was nearly identical. The difference is that BABIP doesn’t include the HR or the walk, two things that make a large difference in say, ERA or OPS.
what about batting average?
interested to know that
the league park factors has always been 1
so they must not have any affect. Coors is just more “lucky”.
sarcasm
Excellent Point
It is a much better stat when used for pitchers because it averages out the random factors that affect each individual hit. Whereas a hitter may have outlier tendencies that can strongly distort BABIP (their speed, their handedness, running into their swing [Ichiro], their ability to get hits on balls that are not line drives, etc.).
Some Others That Haven't Been Touched On
ISO – Isolated power, or SLG – AVG. It’s basically SLG without singles involved. I also like using it for OBP.
OPS+ – What the OPS is based off league average. So, someone with an OPS+ of 120 has an OPS 20% higher than league average. It’s very good when adjusting for hitters leagues/pitchers leagues.
Many other good metrics don’t apply to minor leaguers. I like using the batted ball data, which is way too unreliable for the minors. Also swing data is great for the majors.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a huge saber guy.
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OPS+ is kind of useless with wOBA around
OPS weighs on base percentage and slugging equally when on base percentage is considerably more valuable.
This is pretty much bullshit, man.
The guy reads THIS blog, and he wants to understand what THIS community is talking about. It’s perfectly fair and legitimate for him to ask about these things.
The OP should be commended for having an open mind, not turned away. If you don’t feel like giving an explanation, don’t. I don’t see how being a complete and total douche about it helps anybody.
www.zekeishungry.com
by thejd44 on Feb 17, 2010 1:23 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
I was gonna respond to his comment
but you summed up my thoughts pretty well. . . I apologize to Nivarsity for posting this here, and I apologize for taking up a spot in the comments section. I know how much everyone prefers the “which prospect should i cut on my fantasy team” posts. Sorry to try to get some dialogue going.
He's asking for definitions of terms that could be easily googled
I hear a lot of you stating BABIP and WAR etc, and I guess these don’t mean much to me.
Asking what BABIP or WAR is has been explained many times, and by far better sources than the commenters on this blog. I believe BP has a section devoted to such topics.
the only
reason i go to BP is for Goldsteins prospect work. . . I use this forum and I value the opinions of most of the posters here. . .
So?
He wants to hear from people that will actually answer his questions. Is it more annoying/douchey to make a post asking legitimate questions or post annoying comments on it telling him to go figure it out himself? And he has a point. Would you rather be reading stupid crap about people’s fantasy teams? The post serves an educational purpose. It’s not a waste of space.
The very bad man who traded my first son non-tendered my replacement son. F*ck you Brian Sabean. Leave my children alone.
question
If people are simply looking at the trend in BABIP to determine if a player was ‘lucky’ in a season, then why can’t you do this with his other numbers like AVG or HR or some combination?
For instance, take Adrian Beltre. Do I really need to even look at his BABIP to determine his 04 season was unsustainable?
Cause
Because BABIP, HR/FB rate, etc show WHY the other numbers jumped.
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I noticed nobody’s explained WAR yet, so I’ll try. WAR (wins above replacement) attempts to put an overall value on a player’s contributions to his team in terms of the number of wins he’s worth. This takes every aspect of a player’s game into account: offense, defense, and speed. It also takes into account the importance and offensive expectations of the player’s position (for example, meaning that Hanley Ramirez would be more valuable than a 1B that puts up the exact same numbers). Replacement level means that you overall don’t contribute anything, good or bad, to your team. I’m not quite sure how it works for pitchers, though.
The very bad man who traded my first son non-tendered my replacement son. F*ck you Brian Sabean. Leave my children alone.
FIP
A three true outcomes measure for pitchers. The implication is that hits are too dependent on the defense and therefore should be discounted in assessing a pitchers true talent level (hits are accounted for in the form of batted ball rates in FIPs better older brother, tRA). BB, Ks, and HRs are all outcomes effected only by pitcher and hitter. These three outcomes are given rough weights and plugged into a formula which is then scaled so that it mimics league ERA. This is very shorthand, but pretty much measures a pitchers ability by what he can control.
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