Major League Baseball

Playoff Odds Power Rankings 3 Takeaways: BABIP's early effects

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 9:18 p.m. ET

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There’s a good chance you’ve heard the term BABIP in the recent years, as the world of advanced metrics infiltrated baseball. It’s a clunky acronym, to be sure, but what it conveys is actually quite crucial. Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) tells us how often a ball in play goes for a hit. It’s important to note that not everything that counts towards batting average, counts towards BABIP - namely, home runs and sacrifice bunts. In general terms, once the ball leaves a pitcher’s hand, he has very little control over what happens with it. This is a major facet of Defense/Fielding Independent metrics for pitchers. While perhaps not to the same extent, the same can be said for batters. Once the ball is in play - whether a fielder gets to it or not is beyond their control. There are some additional variables here - faster players can sustain higher BABIPs due to beating out infield hits, players who excel at hitting line drives can support higher BABIPs, etc. Still, in broader terms, the stat can be used to examine who might be getting lucky - or not so lucky.

Boston Red Sox - Hitting BABIP: .257; League Average: .297

Were you wondering what happened to the Red Sox offense that appeared so dominant earlier this season? Perhaps this has something to do with it, as the Red Sox .257 figure represents the worst in the league. They can’t even blame being a flyball oriented team in a pitcher’s park - two factors that combine to drag down BABIP. Still, they’re not exactly all suffering from a case of the Mookies (good at-bats, poor results). The Red Sox rank in the bottom five in terms of hard-hit percentage according to FanGraphs. It’s unlikely a BABIP this far off the league average can be sustained throughout the season, but unless they can start making better contact, they might not regress as much as you’d think.

Cleveland Indians - Pitching BABIP: .340; League Average: .294

It’s worth looking at the relevant pitching stats: innings, strikeouts, walks, hits, etc. and pondering just how in the hell Cleveland’s staff has been so bad while being… so good. BABIP is part of the reason, but as with the Red Sox above, we can’t just assume they’ve been unlucky. Defense has been an issue in Cleveland for basically everyone not named Michael Brantley. Limited range (or poor handling) will result in extra hits on balls in play. Still, being 46 points above the league average shouldn’t last the entire season - especially since some of their top prospects rate incredibly well on defense. Add a competent defense behind a staff that can miss bats like the Indians and there’s hope for a drastic change in “luck.” Of course, Cleveland is usually on the wrong end of the luck spectrum anyway.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - Pitching BABIP: .258; League Average: .294

While Cleveland’s talented staff has a rough defense behind them, the Angels are on the other end of the spectrum. Thanks to a pitching staff that induces the most fly balls in the league (42 percent) and a home ballpark that suppresses home runs - the Angels pitching staff has a league-best .258 BABIP. Add to the park effects the fact that Mike Trout and Kole Calhoun (solid defenders) make up two-thirds of the outfield, and it’s starting to make sense. As above, it would be surprising if this figure lasts, as it’s too early in the season and smaller sample sizes mean some wonkier statistics. Still, it’s not entirely by accident (read: luck) that these teams find themselves where they are. Whether they’re fixable or sustainable going forward is always the question.

Click here to see the full Playoff Odds Power Rankings.

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