Buying Into The BABIP Babble

Hitting, pitching, fielding and a little bit of luck, well actually more than a little bit of luck win baseball games. One part of the equation when it comes to luck, is where a batted ball drops into play. While a line drive may end up in a fielders glove, solely because the ball was hit right at him, a blooper may fall in for a single or double because it landed in no mans land. One of the stats that shows alot of this batted ball luck is BABIP (Batting average on ball in play). For almost all pitchers this stat has been proven to be luck driven, not skill driven. Most pitchers will see their BABIP against hover around .300. With the luckier pitchers seeing their BABIP against, quite a bit lower than this figure, and the unlucky pitchers seeing their BABIP against, quite a bit higher. For example, for pitchers with 50 or more innings pitched this year, the luckiest AL and NL pitchers determined by BABIP against are Ross Ohlendorf (PIT, 0.235) and Matt Garza (TB, 0.243). On the other end of the slate, the unluckiest NL and AL pitchers have been John Lester (BOS, 0.386) and Tim Lincecum (SF, 0.382).

Hitters on the otherhand are said to have more control over their BABIP, through such things as line drive, ground ball, and fly ball rates, speed as well as park factors. Speed allows quick runners the extra advantage of being able to beat out a groundball hit in the infield. BABIP for hitters has proven to be a somewhat repeatable skill. So how are the Dodgers doing as a team when it comes to BABIP for their hitters? They come in at a lofty clip of 0.342! That is a full 0.015 points higher than the next team (TB, 0.327). So are the Dodgers hitters just incredibly lucky this year? One would think so, atleast to a certain degree... so let's take a look at which Dodger players are bringing up the BABIP and if it looks sustainable.

Player	2009 BABIP	Career BABIP	2009 Runs Created
Juan Pierre	0.412	0.319	24.2
Orlando Hudson	0.400	0.323	38.7
Mark Loretta	0.389	0.321	7.4
Matt Kemp	0.388	0.378	28.9
Manny Ramirez	0.377	0.345	29.0
Casey Blake	0.346	0.307	31.6
Russell Martin	0.339	0.316	18.6

So it appears that all these hitters (except for the amazing Matt Kemp) have their BABIP well over their career norms. A steady rise in BABIP this far into a career, outside of the steroid era isn't something likely to be sustainable. We may be seeing an amazing start of the season hitting-wise by this group of Dodgers, that very likely will regress back towards their career norms. Then the question arises, what would the "Runs Created" column look like if we were to regress all of these players BABIP to their exact career norm numbers. This can be easily done by taking each players 2009 distribution/ratio of hits, then modifying the BABIP, which in turn would spit out a new tally of singles, doubles and triples for each player. The "Runs Created" for each player (OBP*SLG*AB) then gets recalculated for each player.

Player	09 Runs Created	Regressed 09 Runs Created
Juan Pierre	24.2	15.6
Orlando Hudson	38.7	27.9
Mark Loretta	7.4	5.5
Matt Kemp	28.9	27.8
Manny Ramirez	29.0	26.5
Casey Blake	31.6	27.7
Russell Martin	18.6	16.7

First off, wow 30.7 runs right there! Let's hope Juan Pierre and Orlando Hudson take their time turning back into pumpkins. Keep in mind that I am only looking at the luckiest group of Dodger hitters, there are likely a few runs that need to be added to the other side of the ledger, though nothing nearing the 30.7 total you see here. What would 30.7 runs mean to this Dodger team? How would it effect their win/loss total. For that answer we can compare the Dodgers current Pythagorean record to one that has 30.7 less runs scored. The Dodgers current Pythagorean winning percentage is .675, and adjusted down 30.7 runs it would become .618. Over the 46 games the Dodgers have played so far, that would be a loss of 2.6 wins.

The Dodgers hitting is bound for a pretty strong regression, let's just hope the amazing starting pitching can keep it's current pace. The Dodgers probably feel pretty safe, leading the Padres who aren't sure if they are a contender or in the midst of a fire sale by 7-1/2 games. It's still early, the Dodgers have been lucky hitting wise, but they are still good enough and the rest of the division bad enough that it probably still doesn't matter. I would like to revisit this later in the season.