What is BABIP?

Today’s modern game of baseball is vastly different from the decades that came before hand. The most glaring difference is how much Sabermetrics, or generally speaking statistics as a whole, have influenced the game of baseball not only in how it’s played, but also how it’s watched, scouted, and utilized for daily fantasy baseball research. There is a handful of new sabermetrics statistics that are being thrown out on a daily basis (i.e. Exit velocity, launch angle, etc.) but one that gets overlooked more than it should is called Batting Average for Balls in Play or BABIP. So what is BABIP? Well the name is pretty self explanatory because it averages the hitter’s batting average exclusively for balls that are put in play. So for reference, when calculating BABIP, walks, intentional walks, hit by pitch, sacrifice bunts, catcher interference and strikeouts are all omitted from this statistic. BABIP is attempting to quantify whether the a hitter is getting extremely lucky for balls in play, if the defense is playing extremely poor when he is up, or if he supremely talented when he is up at the plate. This statistic is extremely useful for fantasy baseball analysis for a few reasons. First, let it be said that an average BABIP is around 30% (similar to what is considered an excellent batting average over a course of a season). For example, if a player has a BABIP around 40% there is reason to believe that will regress dramatically. The simple fact of the matter is, it is really difficult to be getting a hit 40% of the time, regardless of how hard or well you hit the ball on a consistent basis. More times than not, this inflated percentage, has more to do with poor defense and/or luck rather than a player having some superb talent over the competition he is facing. On the other hand, if a player is sporting a BABIP around 20% then there is reason to believe that he is in a slump and will have reason to believe he is going to break out of it soon enough. If you are only getting a hit on 20% of the balls you put in play, you are either hitting barrels right at the defense or have been unable to square the ball up. More fantasy MLB analysis would be necessary to differentiate between the two but all in all, a vast majority of MLB players are going to be hover right around the 30% so if for any reason a guy is drasticlaly above or below that, be keen and do some extra research in an attempt to unfold the real reason why this is happening.