Scary or Scary Good?

[A Boy Named Seo]

An average BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) is around .290, so these guys have been really pretty awesome or really pretty lucky. If lucky, these dudes are going to seem a lot more hittable as those numbers revert some.

Top 10 NL Pitchers in Batting Average on Balls in Play, minimum 60 innings (per ESPN), littered with your New York Mets:

Rank	Player	BABIP
1	Orlando Hernandez - NYM	.216
2	Jason Bergmann - WASH	.232
3	Oliver Perez - NYM	.235
4	Jorge Sosa -NYM	.240
5	Rich Hill - CHI	.242
6	Jason Marquis - CHI	.243
7	John Maine - NYM	.245
8	Chris Young - SD	.245
9	Carlos Villanueva - MIL	.246
10	Jason Hirsh - COL	.248

[smg58]

That may say something about our team defense, though.

[Willets Point]

Could you explain what this stat means? I don't get how one could have a batting average of balls not hit into play.

[Guest Edgy DC]

A guy bats .000 on strikeouts, and 1.000 on homers.

One thesis --- supported by some, but certainly not all researchers --- is that a pitcher has a lot of influence over homers allowed, walks allowed, and strikeouts, but little or none over his batting average allowed on balls in play, seen as merely a product of the defense behind him and pure randomness. And particularly outlying BABiP stats will gravitate back toward the mean.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Sosa I suspect has gotten somewhat lucky in this regard. It's not like he's overpowering and he doesn't whiff a whole lot. I asked a few weeks back how he was doing it and got no good answers.

Maine & Perez have swing & miss kinda stuff: Perhaps the batted balls they allow tend not to be struck particularly well.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

I believe a pitcher does have some control over the percentage of the balls put in play against him that go for hits. As Johnny Dickshot points out, a good pitcher often gets out by getting the hitters to hit the ball with less authority. Some pitchers make a living getting hitters to pound sinkers into easy ground ball outs, yet strike out very few batters. Greg Maddox and Tom Glavine are two future Hall of Fame pitchers that have built careers around getting batters to frequently hit the ball without great authority.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Definitely.

Line drives can be caught, and bloops can fall in, and soft grounders can find a hole, but pitchers who give up a lot of line drives are going to have to deal with a lot more baserunners than pitchers who give up bloops and soft grounders.

[Frayed Knot]

Rockin' Doc wrote: I believe a pitcher does have some control over the percentage of the balls put in play against him that go for hits ... Greg Maddox and Tom Glavine are two future Hall of Fame pitchers that have built careers around getting batters to frequently hit the ball without great authority.

Except that this whole theory started (via a bored law clerk looking to improve his fantasy team) when he discovered that good pitchers like Maddox & GLavine were no more likely to have good BABiP stats in a given year than were more pedestrian pitchers and that rather than being a predictable stat which showed a trend: low walks from David Wells, high Ks from Randy Johnson; it was a number that varied wildly from year to year and pitcher to pitcher.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

He had to later acknowledge that preventing hits was a skill that weeds out the pros from the joes.

I think what's accepted now is the idea that BABIP is way more fickle than anyone woulda guessed and the tendency is for the outliers to return to the pack.

I'd be interested to know even anecdotally what you guys, or the Mets, see as the ability helping Sosa to succeed.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think his level of performance is unsustainable. The strikeout:walk rate just isn't impressive enough, nor his his K/9 rate.

They weren't so hot in 2005 either, but he only threw 2/3 of a seaosn then, and I'm going to guess that he wouldn't have sustained his level over six months then either.

I congratulate the Mets and hope they can get enough out of him until Humfrey is shown to be ready for the bigs.

[Guest attgig]

most of the top pitches have great GB/FB ratios. only Glavine is above 1.

Something about Shea....