This comes from a discussion in the Comments section from yesterday's post. I think it deserves a post of it's own. I also think it puts some of our current despair over the state of the Giants into perspective.
Quick Review: BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls In Play. It's a statistic that lies at the foundation of Sabermetrics, the study of baseball statistics. It was discovered by a fellow name Voros McCracken who noticed that if you removed strikeouts and home runs from the equation, batting averages on balls put in play eventually regress to a mean and are largely out of the control of either the pitcher or the batter. The corollary is that player Batting Averages which are BABIP dependent and are unusually high or low will eventually regress to this mean. So it becomes a fast easy, and admittedly oversimplified, way of predicting future performance. If a batter has a high BABIP, his BA is likely to fade going forward. If it's low, he's likely to show improved numbers going forward. With pitchers, obviously, it's the opposite. The more a batter's production depends on "true outcomes" that are not part of BABIP(Strikeouts, Walks, HR's) the more likely their production to remain stable in the future.
Does it seem to you that an unusually high number of Giants hard-hit balls are turning into outs this season and an unusual number of opponents soft-hit balls are resulting in hits? Well, based on team BABIP's listed in Fangraphs, you are not imagining it and they have not regressed to a mean 2/3's into the season. Did it seem like last season they had an unusually high number of bloop hits and like they caught an unusually high number of opponents line drives? Well, you were not imagining that either.
On an educated hunch, I looked up Team stats on Fangraphs and ranked them by BABIP. After yesterday's games, the Giants rank #25 out of 30 in offensive BABIP at .279. Median for MLB is .291-.292. On the pitching side, they have the #3 highest BABIP at at .306 with a league Median of .287-.289(gotta admit, I don't understand why the batting and pitching median would be different. I understand Median is different than Mean but in a large enough sample they should be very close to the same). In simpler terms, Giants batters and pitchers have both been significantly unlucky this season.
What about last season when their results on the field were much better. Yes, they hit an historic number of HR's which are BABIP independent, but they were also incredibly BABIP lucky. Their offensive BABIP was 11'th highest at .295. OK, that is not so far from the mean but it's a whole lot better than .279! The pitching last year was much luckier ranking #26 at .279.
Now, there are things that influence BABIP that players do have control over. Flyballs tend to have a lower BABIP than groundballs. Fast players can beat out more IF hits so they tend to have higher BABIPs. The whole purpose of shifts and defensive positioning is to suppress BABIP. On the defensive side, lack of range and misplays cause higher BABIPs. On the other hand, we know from a mountain of historical statistics that BABIP almost always regresses to the mean with a large enough sample size.
Conclusion: While the bad defense we have witnessed on a daily basis likely contributes to their poor record, BABIP data strongly suggests that the Giants were unusually lucky last year and unusually unlucky so far this year.
Perhaps this is where karmic, mojo-related factors come into play. My non-scientific observation over the years has been that balls in play seem to find their way to excellent fielders, and that excellent fielders raise the level of the defensive players around them. So defensive BABIP drops. Conversely, clutch, timely hitting likewise seems to be contagious (e.g. ‘02 Angels), raising offensive BABIP. Hard to quantify that but it seems — seems— true. I know number crunchers constantly debunk notions of “clutch” performance but perhaps there’s something else in play.
ReplyDeleteFor this year, though, this team has played lousy on the field and it seems to get in their heads. Karma. Mojo.
thanks for that hard work and analysis!
ReplyDeleteIf a player hits the ball hard, like high rate of line drives, doesn't that lead to a higher BABIP, as well as the corollary, if you're not hitting the ball hard more flies and grounders will get fielded?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the Giant "hard hit" rate, and do the pitchers give up more hard hit balls?
To believe in god is to be human. To believe in the baseball gods is to have watched AND played the game. Farhan has put in his time no doubt watching the game but he seems to lack an understanding of how to actually play the game.
ReplyDeleteAll of the shifts he implements based on his spreadsheets and not understanding the nuances of every pitch of every AB has left him open to BABIP holes that might not exist otherwise. The baseball gods are also letting him know that they exist and he should probably start believing in them and respecting them!
After they let him enjoy a historical season last year yet without a WS championship, I think they along with most fans expected FZ to actually spend some money this last offseason or pull off some incredible trades as opposed to continue the dumpsters diving churn life!
I also think players agents and the MLBPA must hate FZ and any success he enjoys that could further justify his frugal ways. The less FZ spends each year with success means the less other teams will spend which results in less money overall for the players.
It mostly affects the middle class of players since the superstars will always get their money and the scrubs love the extra opportunities they get with teams like the Giants but most of the league consists of middle class. Does anyone in the players union actually want to see a guy like FZ win with total disregard to defensive ability who is driving the market for most players down in $ and years?
Interesting post. I personally think that it was inevitable that a setback would occur after the retirement of a HOF Catcher, and the ongoing aging of the Core. There have also been a lot more injuries IMHO this year, which is somewhat bad luck also.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I don't completely buy that BABIP is as uniform as one is lead to believe. Most of the pure batting average hitters likely have a high BABIP, but it isn't all luck. The Giants this year aren't a great batting average hitting team, IMHO. They score runs however, and that could be related to the power dynamic that seems to be valued in recent years.
The shifts lower BABIP, but they increase extra base hits.
ReplyDeleteBut both are marginal differences as are all actions that players can take to influence BABIP. Historically it is an exceptionally stable stat.
Delete