An interesting tidbit over the weekend from Steve Lombardi of Was Watching and Baseball-Reference.com, asking if Phil Hughes has been more lucky than good so far.
As food for dialogue Steve offers the statistic of batting average on balls put in play:
Batting Average on balls put into play (BAbip) is a pitcher’s batting average allowed on batted balls ending a plate appearance with the exception of home runs. Some say that BAbip is mostly the product of the defense behind a pitcher and luck – rather than some sign of a pitcher’s skill. Related, many feel that pitchers with an abnormally high or low BAbip are destined to see their results regress to the mean. On average, overall, it’s reasonable to see a BAbip around .300.
For the year to date Hughes has a BAbip of .208.
BAbip of course doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s possible that the batting average on balls put in play is low because batters are hitting rockets right at people of course, or because a defense is playing great, or because hitters are having weak hacks and dribbling harmless ground balls. But clearly a guy pitching to a BAbip of .208 is likely not going to stay there for the whole year. As points of historical comparison Tim Lincecum pitched to a BAbip of .288 last year. In 1972, when he was 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA, Steve Carlton pitched to a .259 BAbip. In 1999, when he was 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA, Pedro Martinez pitched to a .325 BAbip.
These numbers suggest two things to me. First, that Hughes will probably see his BAbip go up. But second, that a higher BAbip won’t necessarily mean a much worse ERA or winning percentage. In 1999 Pedro pitched to a .325 BAbip but a .205 over all batting average against. Hitters so far are batting .157 against Hughes. Certainly batting average against is a much more critical statistic than BAbip, and BAbip doesn’t necessarily equate to batting average against–though I suspect that having a season like Pedro’s in 1999, with a high BAbip and very low batting average against means striking out a lot of people. That year Pedro struck out 313 with a K rate of 13.2/9 innings! Hughes is only striking out 8.7 per nine innings–a number closer to Carlton’s ‘72 rate of 8.1.
Other notable pitchers off to hot starts with lower than average BAbips include Livan Hernandez, Barry Zito, David Price, and Wade Davis. Want to know what guys are really pitching in good luck–pitchers with high BAbips, high batting averages against, and decent ERAs: Jonathan Niese for example, with a 3.60 ERA a .377 BAbip and a .315 BA against. Those numbers suggest Niese could be cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
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