How do some players maintain such high BAbips?

24 Replies

Some players seem to be able to maintain really high BAbips (batting average on balls in play.) It’s one thing for a guy like Ichiro to do it…he has a .347 career BAbip, which is really high, but not so much higher than his career BA of .322.

Here are active players (minimum 2000 plate appearances) with BAbips at least 20% higher than their batting averages, minimum .296 BAbip, which is league average for 2012 only.

Rk	Player	BAbip	BA	PA	From	To
1	Shin-Soo Choo	.354	.290	2760	2005	2012
2	Dexter Fowler	.346	.268	2013	2008	2012
3	Michael Bourn	.345	.275	3192	2006	2012
4	Wilson Betemit	.341	.268	2313	2001	2012
5	Chase Headley	.338	.270	2610	2007	2012
6	Jack Cust	.337	.242	2581	2001	2011
7	Brad Hawpe	.337	.276	3369	2004	2011
8	Justin Upton	.336	.276	2847	2007	2012
9	Jayson Werth	.326	.266	3743	2002	2012
10	B.J. Upton	.324	.255	3859	2004	2012
11	Mark Teahen	.324	.264	3171	2005	2011
12	Alex Gordon	.322	.268	2850	2007	2012
13	Jeremy Hermida	.314	.257	2261	2005	2012
14	Bill Hall	.310	.248	3674	2002	2012
15	Kelly Johnson	.309	.257	3631	2005	2012
16	Mark Reynolds	.309	.235	3248	2007	2012
17	Rickie Weeks	.306	.251	3800	2003	2012
18	Ronny Cedeno	.299	.248	2440	2005	2012
19	Russell Branyan	.296	.232	3398	1998	2011

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/13/2012.

Kind of a neat list, huh? It’s got some fast guys like Fowler and Bourn, who (like Ichiro) probably get a high BAbip because they are able to beat out a higher fraction of infield grounders). It also includes some three true outcome guys like Cust, Reynolds, and Branyan, who don’t necessarily put the ball in play that much, have low batting averages, and hit a higher rate of balls out of the park.

It is, in fact, these TTO guys who have the highest increase of BAbip over BA. Cust is tops, with a BAbip 39% higher than his BA. The rest of the leaders among the list above are Reynolds (31%), Fowler (29%), Branyan (28%), and Betemit (27%).

0 0 votes

Article Rating

24 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Curse your 2,000-PA minimum, Andy! 🙂

For 1,500 PAs, Austin Jackson is the active BAbip king (.375, 2nd all-time to Ty Cobb), and his BAbip is 33% above his BA.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

JA, what’s your personal opinion on Jackson and his BABIP? You watch a lot of Tiger games, and I still say astute fans’ observations are the first thing we should check when dealing with BABIP. Does he rarely make weak outs? Is his LD% off the charts? Surely his speed has something to do with it. What’s your take on him?

Editor

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

b, the sad truth is that I see very few Tigers games, being too cheap to lay out the bucks for that MLB cable package. So I’m as curious as you are about how Jackson does it. He did get a lot of infield hits in his first 2 years — 32 in each year — but just 8 this year (per B-R). So even though he has the same sort of BAbip this year as he did in 2010 — actually, the exact same .396 mark — I wouldn’t assume that the same sorts of things are driving it.… Read more »

Jim Bouldin

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

I don’t know where the line drive data comes from, but in my observations this year in maybe 15 games or so, when Jackson hits it, he rips it. Lots of line drives and other hard hit balls. Combine that with his speed and I’d think that would pretty much explain it.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Jim Bouldin

Jim, just click on the “Advanced Stats” tab on a player’s page to the right of Standard Batting, and scroll down to “Ratio Batting”.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Jim Bouldin

*More Stats, not Advanced Stats, sorry.

Jim Bouldin

12 years ago

Reply to Jim Bouldin

Great, thanks for that tip bstar, that’s helpful.

BryanM

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

I don’t see many Tigers games either, but I note that none of the speed guys on Andy’s list are like Otis Nixon – they’ve all got some pop. Obviously the way to maximize Babip as a % of BA is to a) strike out a lot, (lowering BA without affecting BAbip) and b) hit the ball hard when you keep it in the yard. Suggested indicator for the latter: (2B + 3B)/(AB-HR-SO) Jackson is off the charts on this — nearly 10% of BIP are XBH – Fowler and Bourn also are also pretty good ; they’re not just… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

Thanks for the input, guys. I stared at Jayson Werth’s numbers last night for a few minutes…..and I got nothing on him.

Evan

12 years ago

Adam Dunn has played himself off this list this year moving his number from 20.2 to 19.9. This is really the domain of guys whose Ks are disproportionate to their HRs. since HRs raise your BA without affecting your BAbip, while K’s lower your BA without affecting your BAbip. Anything else should be more or less neutral.

Evan

12 years ago

Reply to Evan

I left out SF which lower the BAbip without affecting the BA.

mosc

12 years ago

Reply to Evan

Yeah, this is why BABIP has never been much use to me statistically. HR and strikeouts skew the numbers far more than the factors people are actually interested in finding out. Ichiro beats out infield singles. He does it so much that it makes up for the low HR and low strikeout numbers. It’s also pretty far from luck. If you watched last night’s game it was vintage ichiro getting hits on balls between the third basemen and shortstop with balls that would have come to a complete stop short of the left fielder. So you’re talking about a stat… Read more »

Doug

12 years ago

Low BA guys get an easier ride on this list, since the incremental improvement over their BA is commensurately smaller. A list with BABIP some increment higher (say 50 points) might be more revealing.

Per Evan’s points the truest expression of this trait might be for players who neither homer nor strike out frequently (e.g. Ichiro).

Michael Sullivan

12 years ago

I would expect TTO players to show up on this list if they are good. The whole idea behind the high TTO batting strategy, is that you are waiting for pitches you can do better with, so turning a lot of marginal BIPs into Ks and walks, while using the tightened area focus to hit the balls you do attack a bit better.

Those for whom this strategy is *working*, presumably have a greater LD% on BIP than they would if they swung more, or than similar hitters who do swing more.

Richard Chester

12 years ago

I did some spreadsheet analysis and it confirmed the conclusions of posts 3 and 5. Also a high number of strikeouts is necessary. I found 2 players with a BABIP/BA ratio of more than 1.30, Jack Cust with 1.393 and Mark Reynolds with 1.313. They both have SO/HR ratio of > 6.

For comparison Ichiro has a SO/HR ratio of 7.96 with a BABIP/BA ratio of 1.073.
He has few SO which accounts for his low BABIP/BA ratio even though his SO/HR ratio is high.

brp

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

I thought Wilson Betemit was an outlier but he does have very high K rates, around 1/3 of his ABs. Headley isn’t really a plodding power guy but has high BB/K rates and even Teahen has high BB and K rates.

So I guess it is just the burners like Bourn & Fowler and then guys with high TTO, even if the HR rate isn’t huge. I would imagine this would mean a guy like Mark Bellhorn would have a fairly big gap, as a recent historical comparison? Or Jimmy Wynn?

BryanM

12 years ago

Good stuff, Andy – Not knowing how to manipulate BR , I would be interested in stats with a higher cutoff, maybe 4000 PA, going back a little farther in time, It seems to me that once, long,long ago we gave too much credence to BA as an indicator of how well a player was doing; with the development of BAbip we could say ” actually , whether a ball put in play is a hit or not has a large element of luck; so when Joe Blah only hit .278 this year, instead of the .317 last year; he… Read more »

Richard Chester

12 years ago

I did some more spreadsheet analysis. There have been 26 players with more than 2000 PA and a SO/HR ratio of less than 2, careerwise. None of them have a BABIP/BA ratio of more than 1. The range was .920 to .972. Then I did the same thing for a SO/HR ratio of less than 4. There were 350 players and the range of the BABIP/BA ratio ranged from .920 to 1.100. So to achieve a BABIP/BA ratio of more than 1.200 requires a SO/HR ratio of more than 4 as a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Michael Sullivan

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

It seems like this is mostly a matter of mathematical inevitability. Guys who strike out a lot without hitting a ton of homers will have a high BABIP. Basically you can just look at what various stats can change BABIP vs. BA and how they do it. SOs make your BABIP higher than your BA, because they come out of the denominator in BABIP, but not the numerator. HRs reduce your BABIP, because they come out of both numerator and denominator (unless your BA is 1.000). Now those are the most crucial, but there are two other key stats. ROE… Read more »

Richard Chester

12 years ago

Reply to Michael Sullivan

I did some further analysis. I’m not sure of this but it looks like for a player with less than a .334 BA and less than a 2 SO/HR ratio it is mathematically impossible to achieve a BABIP higher than his BA. The same is true for a player with less than a .250 BA and a SO/HR ratio of less than 3. I did not consider SAC and ROE.

Michael Sullivan

12 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

it is possible mathematically but probably not in practice. Consider player A who has 1 hit in 4 AB, a homer, along with one SO and 2 groundouts. this guy’s BABIP is .000 But suppose he also has 2 ROEs. This doesn’t change his BA, but now his BABIP is .400, much higher than his BA of .250. This is why ROEs and SACs matter in the math. In practice player differences in ROEs and SACs are small enough that the SO/HR ratio ends up dominating most of the time, which is what you are finding. I doubt you will… Read more »

Brendan Bingham

12 years ago

Interesting discussion, everyone, but does anyone else have an issue with the fact that BABIP is a stat that results from disregarding such important (and completely different) events as strike outs and home runs? It’s kind of like analyzing your diet after ignoring vegetables and ice cream.

brp

12 years ago

Reply to Brendan Bingham

I think the main value from BABIP is to catch flukes in BA. So if a guy like Yuniesky Betancourt is all of a sudden hitting .325 there’s probably a BABIP fluke and regression can be expected, or if a young player has a second-year jump in BA but his BABIP stays the same, he’s probably improved his plate discipline. I do pay attention to it for fantasy purposes mostly; BABIP allowed is a decent indicator of pitcher’s luck. It’s not a supremely useful stat but it has some merit. For your diet analysis, say you kept eating veggies and… Read more »

BryanM

12 years ago

Reply to brp

Agreed that the stat is much more useful for pitchers – reason, since all pitchers face ,in effect the whole league, some get lucky for a while , and all the hard-hit balls are right at someone, whereas others suffer from seeing-eye 8 hoppers. What would be interesting is to figure out HOW MUCH of variance in BABIP is luck — would need a covariance analysis with line drive %, defensive skill, defensive shifts, etc. way too hard a statistics problem for me – I look at 2B + 3B % to check for a large luck element — If… Read more »