https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/babip/ Is it still a stat people focus on, I still don’t know what it’s supposed to tell you about a player
I’m going to try to explain it in simple terms, but please forgive me if I screw up. It was originally meant to assess pitchers. It removes the plate appearances that are totally in a pitchers control (walk, strikeouts and home runs) and assesses the PAs that depend on other factors, namely batted balls that are in play. By looking at only these and comparing them to the league average (about .300) you can assess whether a pitcher is the victim of either bad luck or bad defense. So a BABIP that’s significantly above average for a pitcher means that many factors that are outside of his control are causing his stats to be worse and you should expect them to improve as luck evens out. The reverse is true for a pitcher that allows a BABIP below average. You should expect stats to worsen as his good luck runs out. Obvious exceptions to this are 1)defense- a bad defense won’t necessarily get better over time and 2) a pitcher that allows a lot of hard contact- hard contact makes balls harder to field. Also since line drives go for hits more often than other batted balls, a pitcher that gives up lots of hard hit balls, and especially line drives will have a high BABIP regardless of luck. So you have to look at the type of pitcher when you evaluate BABIP.
It works the same way for hitters. If a hitter has a BABIP significantly higher than league average, you might expect some regression because he may be getting lucky. If it’s lower, maybe he’s getting unlucky. The caveats for hitters are 1) hard contact- hard hit balls are more likely to go for hits. So a hitter that hits the ball hard tends to have a higher BABIP and 2) speed- a very fast runner will be able to leg out more hits.
So we can use the example of Michael Taylor. Some folks expect regression this year because he had a high BABIP (.363) last year. This implies he was getting lucky and can’t sustain his production. But he hits the ball hard and is quite fast, so that may account for some of the high BABIP, so only time will tell. For what it’s worth, his BABIP is .263 so far this season implying his slow start may be due to a bit of bad luck, but again, only time will tell.
I hope this makes sense.
