BABIP: A Key to Winning or Just Another Talk Show Fodder Stat?

You’ll never see a sport with such useless stats as you will in baseball. Baseball statisticians will keep track of any statistics they possibly can just to have something new to tell television and radio audiences. I’ll never have to worry about Nomar Garciaparra’s on base percentage on his birthday when the temperature is below 80 degrees because some guy somewhere has already researched that for me.

Now any GM will tell you that they’re always looking for new strategies to win. Heck, even I’ve personally hours researching players, veterans and rookies alike, poring over every stat acronym imaginable just for fun! I’ve read about AVG, ERA, HR, WHIP, K/9, BB, RBI, OPS, FPCG, E, and SB, the typical stats that any true fan of the game should know. But if you don’t, they’re batting average, earned run average, home runs, walks plus hits over innings pitched, strikeouts per 9 innings, walks, runs batted in, on base plus slugging percentage, fielding percentage, errors and stolen bases. Phew.

But in addition to all of these, one stat that I have never followed before has really caught my eye this spring: BABIP, or batting average on balls in play. The reason that BABIP caught me eye is because it claims to be able to accurately determine something that is usually difficult to perceive in baseball: luck. No doubt this has raised a few eyebrows into the validity of a stat that claims to determine something that is not within the control of humanity.

BABIP seems to rely on the belief that once a ball is put into the field of play, anything goes. In other words, it assumes that there are no set “definite outs” and “definite hits” and any ball put into play that reaches the ground or a glove did so because luck was on a certain side. A high BABIP for a hitter tends to mean that he is extremely lucky. This could be for a number of reasons: he may be hitting ahead of better hitters and this gives him more hittable pitches, he could be making solid contact all season long, or lightning might strike the ball every time he hits it into play and this allows him to reach base safely. The same goes for a pitcher, except that pitchers with an extremely low BABIP are considered very lucky. They might play on a field that slows the ball down often or they might just have pinpoint control for a season and that results in the abnormality. The problem with this is that players don’t reach the big leagues on luck alone. They have to have skill. Regardless of how lucky a player may or may not be, chances are that in the end, good players will have good stats and bad players will have bad stats. Luck can only win over skill for so long.

Renowned baseball statistics website Fangraphs.com has the average BABIP of a hitter around .300 and the average BABIP of a pitcher at about .290. Using these numbers, a skilled general manager is supposed to be able to weed out fluky players from truly skilled ones. Take Jake Peavy for example, who I consider to be truly skilled and not fluky (and if you disagree, see a doctor). Many questioned his 2006 year in which he posted a 4.09 ERA, well above his 3.31 career average, and had only 11 wins, 4 below his average of 15. This caused him to drop slightly in drafts in 2007. A closer look into his BABIP in 2006 shows that it was nearly .320, 30 points above the average mark! This means that if a hitter put the ball into play off of Peavy, they had a good chance of reaching base. But just last year, he won the pitching triple crown of ERA, wins and K’s en route to a Cy Young award winning season. Lo and behold, his BABIP last year? Back down to .292, only 2 points above the average. BABIP shows how his 2006 campaign, which was still respectable, in no way determines what kind of player he really is. It can be said that he just didn’t have luck on his side that year. But naysayers will argue that it is just because he is better player and his skill won out returning him to his usual form last year.

But what about when you worry that a player isn’t really that skilled and might just be riding a tidal wave of luck for an entire season? Is BABIP a trustworthy stat in that situation? Well, take a player by the name of Adrian Beltre, current third baseman for the Seattle Mariners. Before he signed that massive contract with the Mariners, he was the third baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 6 seasons leading up until 2004, he had never hit more than .290 or slammed more than 21 home runs in a single season. But in 2004, which just happened to be a contract year, he hit .324 with 48 home runs and slugged .629. Pretty abnormal numbers for a previously normal player, but the Seattle Mariners bought it and signed him to a monstrous deal. He would go on to hit only .255 with 19 homers in his first season with the Mariners. And that slugging percentage? It dropped almost 200 points, down to .413. But to a keen general manager, this disastrous contract could have been avoided by just checking the BABIP stat. Beltre’s monster 2004 season saw his BABIP rise to .340, 40 points above average! 40! For a hitter who had never shown any signs of superstardom before, this should have been a telling sign that perhaps a lot of his hitting that year was luck. An educated GM would have ignored Beltre and searched for talent that had more consistent numbers throughout their careers. But still, his 2005 BABIP was only about .255, 45 points below average, meaning that a bit of a rebound should have been expected in 2006. He did rebound, hitting .268 with 25 homers that year. So was it luck or skill? Did BABIP really provide a good view of Beltre as a hitter? He had a monster year, a bad year and a decent year. So which was the real Beltre?

BABIP is clearly not without its flaws. Because it only takes account of balls put into play, home runs and strikeouts don’t count. A hitter could have a very low BABIP, but if they’re hitting 45 home runs every year, who cares? A pitcher might have a high BABIP but if their ERA is perennially in the low 4’s and they consistently have over 200 K’s, it makes no real difference. That’s why BABIP is more effective in predicting players that you don’t know much about. This year, many people will look to players like Josh Hamilton, B.J. Upton and Hideki Okajima to repeat their stellar 2007 seasons. Hamilton looked like a whole new person once he finally reached the majors, hitting .292 with 19 homers in only 298 at-bats. But his BABIP was slightly high, hovering around .315. Injuries aside, he is a bit of a gamble, but still worth the risk in my book if you want to consider his BABIP. Upton had a great campaign in 2007 but his BABIP was at .400 in more than double the at-bats at 498! That is an astronomical 100 points above the average! This guy must have had his bats lined with four leaf clovers. And Okajima, the great story as the “other Japanese guy” on the Boston Red Sox, posting a tiny 2.22 ERA with 63 K’s had a BABIP of about .250, 40 points below the average. The differences may be small in some cases, but these are all unproven talent. If someone like Upton cannot even come close to living up to his 2007 level, and his BABIP, if believed, suggests that, then there will be a lot of unhappy Rays fans.

The thing that BABIP exemplifies so well is obsession with statistics. All statistics tell a different key point but they all share one common flaw: they only give details about the past. Statistics can be helpful in determining what a player will become but they are all heavily flawed because none of them talk about the future. BABIP is a great example because it shows just how crazy baseball people have become in using numerical values for luck in deciding on players. No stat is going to tell you how a guy will do in the future. He might get hurt, he might just struggle mentally or he might simply lose interest in the game. There is no single great stat that is going to produce a winning team.

So put the pencils down, GM’s, and just think. Stats aside, can the guy simply play the game?

Not Related to Baseball but…

I recently filmed a movie for the Campus Moviefest, the largest collegiate movie festival in the world.  Requirements were to make a 5 minute movie in 1 week.  We chose to make a comedy called “Seedless” and it won Best Comedy at the Boston College awards and will be shown at the Boston area festival next week.  So, please go here, check it out, and let us know what you think!

http://www.ourstage.com/video/channel/21-comedy/YEYFVIRMGKNI-seedless

Friday’s News and Notes

• Prince Fielder FINALLY hit his first home run the other day against St. Louis. Even I was surprised to find, according to Rotowire, that he had a similar start last season, hitting only 1 home run through his first 15 games.
• The man referred to only as “Max” in Jose Canseco’s new book Vindicated who allegedly gave A-Rod roids is supposedly trainer Joseph Dion.  Dion says that the report is absolutely false and that A-Rod was “absolutely against steroids” at the time he trained him.  Canseco rebutted “But the aliens are positive A-rod juiced!”
• The Rockies beat the Padres in 22 innings 2-1 yesterday.
• Miguel Tejada lied to MLB in saying he is 31 years old, as ESPN uncovered his birth certificate and found him to be 33.  He has admitted this and apologized to the Astros.  “All the cool kids were doing it” excuse used in his defense.
• The Mariners may get both Erik Bedard and J.J. Putz back next week.  The AL West shuddered.
• Manny Ramirez looks like an MVP calibur player after his 2 homer, 3 hit performance against the Yankees last night.  David Ortiz still looks like his knee is ruining his game.
• Andruw Jones is terrible. Don’t believe me? http://mlb.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=116662
• Looks like the Tigers have finally woken up.
• St. Louis, of all teams is 11-5.  Can their makeshift pitching last?

Yankee Universe? Not On This Planet

On Wednesday night, astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman threw out the ceremonial first pitch of the Sox-Yankees game.  This was the next step in the Steinbrenner’s plans to compete with Red Sox Nation and institute Yankee Universe as the dominant superpower in the imaginary political sports world.  The Steinbrenner family wants to show the world that it is not the Red Sox who are THE baseball team, but the Yankees.

What a load.

I am in no way attacking the Yankees or their fans.  The Yankees are a storied franchise that have consistently played hard to win and have knowledgeable and passionate fans.  Say whatever you want about the payroll, but the Yankees always want to win and have players and management that are willing to do what it takes to accomplish that.

But Yankee Universe is a sign of desperation in all the wrong areas.  It shows that the Yankees are obsessed with defeating the Red Sox in all aspects of the game, not just what occurs on the field.  The ownership not wants to outdo the Sox by regaining championship form, having a better farm system, marketing their players more, and gaining fans overseas.  And let’s be realistic, the Sox want to outdo the Yankees in all of these places too.

But that is not a part of Red Sox Nation or Yankee Universe.  Those are organizational concerns, things that fans have no control over and what Hank Steinbrenner is doing is trying to forge an already identifiable fanbase into a cheap and stupid catchphrase, simply to attack the Sox.

Red Sox Nation did not come about because the ownership thought it up at a marketing meeting.  I would say that the Nation came about after the 1967 Impossible Dream team.  That team brought about new fans and a renewed sense of pride in a historic franchise.  Only later on did the fans themselves decide that this sort of dedication to a single team transcends a simple love of the game.  Red Sox fans feel a sense of togetherness, or brother and sisterhood.  They felt that the struggles that the Sox went through were their own struggles, the losses they had were their losses, the grief and the heartbreak and years upon years of disappointment was shared across the minds of every Red Sox fan.  Nobody was an individual here, they were united in a single goal: to support this team together, no matter how bad the times may be.

Yankee Universe is a marketing ploy, plain and simple, and the first pitch from space was simply a means to gain attention for Steinbrenner’s new assault at the psyche of the Sox.  The problem with this is that the Steinbrenner’s see Yankee Universe as a real, physical entity, something you can reach out and actually feel, or see, or touch.  Yankee Universe presents itself to you, you don’t search for it yourself.  That is what is wrong here.  The real Red Sox nation, the one that doesn’t involve membership cards, ticket giveaways or autograph signings has been around for so long within the fans.  You will never see a leader of a country throw out a first pitch or reenactments of great battles for liberty that created such nations.  It’s not that literal.

Red Sox Nation may not be perfect and lately, it is becoming a bit more commercial.  But it wasn’t created by someone who desperately wants to knock down his rival any possible way that he can.  Red Sox Nation just is.  It is, it has been and it always will be.  Yankee Universe just, well, isn’t real.

The Differences of American and Japanese Baseball

I’ve posted a lot on here about Japanese baseball players but little on the game of baseball in Japan.  But just what differences exist between MLB and Japanese Professional Baseball? The game itself is not as different as you think.  There are two leagues, one employing a DH (the Pacific League), the other having the pitcher bat (the Central League).  Teams represent a certain geographic area.  There are “faces” of a franchise that garner more admiration (and subsequently, cash).  But the presentation of the game is sure to turn a few heads.  Here are some key differences between the two:

1.) Small ball! - This one is pretty obvious and is usually the topic of conversation on American television or radio programs when referencing Japanese baseball.  In Japan, less emphasis is placed on home runs with players and managers instead focusing on small ball: walks, sac flys, stolen bases, bunts, and solid fielding.  Many credit Japan’s small ball approach with their win of the 2006 World Baseball Classic.  This does not mean that there are no big home run hitters in Japan, however, most of the them are foreign players, like Alex Cabrera or Tuffy Rhodes.  For a consistently good Japanese home run hitter, look up Yomiuri Giants star Michihiro Ogasawara.

2.) Ties are a possibility in Japanese baseball - In Major League Baseball, if it takes 20 innings and two days to break a tie, so be it.  You will never see a tie game in the Majors except under the most extreme of circumstances.  Ties in Japan are uncommon, but not completely impossible.  There is a rule in Japan that after 15 innings if the game remains tied, it will end as a tie.  This rule does not apply to the playoffs, of course.

3.) Hit a batter, tip your cap - In Japan, if a pitcher hits a batter, it is customary for the pitcher to tip his cap as the batter takes a base.  This is a sign of respect and proof that the pitcher did not intend to injure the hitter.  There are really no intentional hit batsmen or retaliatory pitches in Japanese baseball.  Good thing Roger Clemens never played in Japan.  He probably would have been deported.

4.) Six man rotations - Japanese baseball teams employ six man rotations.  Doing so gives the pitcher extra preparation (they only pitch once a week if there is an off day) and keeps their arms “fresh”.  I use quotations because the definition of fresh is highly volatile.  Many starters in Japan throw over 100 pitches on every occasion.  Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hiroki Kuroda, starters who have moved to MLB, have received extra care from trainers to ensure that the one day less of rest does not adversely affect their performance.

5.) The Japan Series is not the last series for the champs - The Asia Series, or officially, the Konami Cup, is a new playoff series that started in 2005.  Each November, the champions of Japanese Professional Baseball, Korean Professional Baseball, the Taiwan Baseball League and the Chinese Professional League play each other head to head.  The top two teams advance to a championship round and the best team is considered the champion of baseball in Asia.  Japan has won every year, with the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2005, the Nippon Ham Fighters in 2006 and the Chunichi Dragons in 2007.

6.) Team names contain the company that owns them - The Boston Red Sox.  The New York Yankees.  The Philapdelphia Phillies.  American baseball clubs are named after the city or state that they represent (unless you’re the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, in which case you have a stupid name).  Japanese clubs are named after the company that owns them.  Yomiuri is not the city in which the Giants play.  The Giants are a Tokyo-based franchise but are owned by the Yomiuri Newspaper and hence are named after them.  The Seibu Lions are from Saitama but are named after the Seibu Department Stores.  The Nippon Ham Fighters are from Hokkaido but are named after the meat company.  The Softbank Hawks are from Fukuoka but are named after the joint bank and cell phone company.  Only one team does not have a company listed in their name: the Yokohama Bay Stars, even though they are owned by TBS, a television station.

7.) Fan Cheering Sections - If you do ever manage to see a Japanese baseball game on TV, you will notice that there is almost constant singing and cheering.  This comes from the designated “cheering sections” for the two teams playing.  Fans sitting in these sections learn cheers for each individual player on their favorite team and sing them at each at-bat.  There are usually two or three people leading a section, complete with drums and a trumpet to maintain a beat and to alert the fans as to what cheer they will sing next.  What is most unusual is that the cheering occurs only in this section, with every other part of the stadium relatively quiet.

8.) FIght Songs - Every team has a fight song.  You can’t call yourself a diehard fan if you don’t know your teams song! Often sung during the 7th or 8th inning at the home team’s stadium, these songs are meant to inflict pride and give the home team extra strength to get the win.  These songs are even available at karaoke centers for any fan to sing.  The most famous fight song is the Hanshin Tigers’, with such lyrics as:

Powerful hits and skillful pitches achieved a thousand times
Trained with every discipline here at Koshien
Crowned with constant victory, glorious, matchless feats
Always proud, invincible “Hanshin Tigers”

(Source: http://everything2.com/e2node/Hanshin%2520Tigers)

9.) Food - Hungry at the ballpark? How about a nice hot dog and a soda? Or a juicy burger? How about breaded pork with curry and rice or fried octopus balls? Food at Japanese ballparks ranges from your standard hot dog to a complete obento, a boxed meal that usually has a main dish like sushi or curry, rice, Japanese pickles, and a small portion of cabbage.  The unfortunate part? You have to get out of your seat to buy any of it.  Don’t fret yet, because in Japan, there are…

10.) Beer Girls!! - While you do have to get up to buy food at the ballpark, you don’t have to move a muscle for drinks.  Baseball stadiums employ beer girls who walk around the park with about a keg of beer on their back that is constantly kept cool.  They pour your beer straight from the tap and hand it to you in your seat.  The best part? It’s twofold.  There is no strict beer licensing at ballparks like in America, meaning you can get three or four different choices of what to have.  Also, tipping is not customary in Japan, so no scrambling to find a dollar in quarters in your wallet or purse.  The bad part? It’s expensive, with higher end beers like Asahi Super Dry sometimes costing $9 or $10.