The Atlanta Braves, BABIP, and the horse it rode in on
I have arrived at the pet shop, and I wish to register a complaint. The parroting I keep hearing about BABIP has shuffled off its mortal coil.
It will take me a bit to get around to the Atlanta Braves‘ connection I have for you today. But I promise, we will get there.
In the meantime, I need to rant a bit. There are a couple of “Advanced Stats” that I really have trouble with. And it’s not that I have trouble understand them, it’s that I have trouble seeing them being abused.
One of these is FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching)… and I’ve already whined about that one… 3 years ago, in fact. The other is BABIP – the ‘Batting average on balls in play’ stat. Turns out that both are cousins.
Up to this point, I’ve only put in a dig or two about BABIP and mostly kept my annoyances about it to myself.
But the straw that broke the moose’s back was this, from MLB Trade Rumors on May 7th. I will quote the entire paragraph for sake of context, with emphasis added:
"After two blown saves in as many days for Francisco Rodriguez, Tigers manager Brad Ausmus told reporters (including MLB.com’s Alex Espinoza) that the team is “going to have to have a discussion” about the closer role. Rodriguez has blown four saves in 11 opportunities this season, and his ERA ballooned to 8.49 after today’s ugly performance. K-Rod has seen a marked increase in hard contact this season (36.8%, as opposed to 29.2% last year) and he has lost a mile off his fastball from last season, now averaging 88.2mph on his heater. With that being said, there may also be some bad luck involved in Rodriguez’s poor start, such as a .405 BABIP, 29.3% grounder rate and 21.1% fly ball rate that all seem destined to eventually normalize."
Exploring the Context
Ladies and gentlemen: there is a reason that the artist formerly known as “K-Rod” has a .405 BABIP against. He’s throwing meatballs and begging hitters to destroy them.
Here’s a few more telling stats about our Tigers hurler:
- HR/FB ratio: up 50% from 12.8% last year to 21%
- Line drive rate: up 50% from 16% to 24.4%
- Medium contact down by 23%; hard contact up by 13%
- Down 1 mph further* on his fastball (to 88.4), 1.5 mph on his curve (other pitches about the same)
*As Fred alluded to the other day, MLB has changed how these velocities are recorded… which should have increased pitching speed reports – with all other things being equal. So Rodriguez’ fastball is actually more than 1 mph slower (probably 1.5 mph) than before.
Yeah – he’s gonna be hit harder with more success.
So is Tiger’s manager Ausmus replacing K-Rod because he’s unlucky or his numbers need to “normalize”? No – it’s because he’s pitching badly.
People – this BABIP thing isn’t about “luck”. Nay, nay: this is almost entirely the symptom of somebody throwing batting practice.
Last year, hitters had a batting average against Rodriguez of .211. This year it’s .352. Re-read the stats above if you can’t understand why
What’s fascinating is that he’s actually getting more strikeouts – probably because hitters are releasing that top jersey button and trying to kill the baseball since they know it’s possible.
And yet as we see above, that term “luck” continues to be strongly applied to BABIP … despite other evidence to the contrary.