BABIP
and its Respective Correlation to HR/9
Would more balls hit deep be a reason for more hits
in play?
11/15/03
Phil Orr
A while ago I became fascinated with
Voros McCracken's study on Batting Average with Balls in Play and
how pitchers effectively had no control over hits when the batter
put the ball in play. Later, this theory was revised to some
but very little control, which seems fairly accurate. Still, I had
come up with the theory that the difference in a pitcher who consistently
allows a higher BABIP was due to a higher ability to allow homeruns.
This comes from the thinking that as well as allowing more homeruns,
this type of pitcher will allow more balls to hit the wall, thus creating
more hits in play. If this were true, it was possible that there was
no ability to avoid hits with the ball in play at all. So I brought
out my trusty Excel and downloaded some numbers from www.baseball1.com
and set up a table that calculated approximate BABIP and HR/9 for
all qualifying pitchers (162 IP or more) between 1998-2002.
The following are the top 10 pitchers in lowest approximate BABIP
| Year |
Name |
BABIP |
HR/9 |
HR/9 Rank (407) |
| 2002 |
Moss, Damian |
.220 |
.112 |
182 |
| 2002 |
Lowe, Derek |
.224 |
.055 |
10 |
| 2002 |
Wakefield, Tim |
.229 |
.092 |
90 |
| 1999 |
Millwood, Kevin |
.231 |
.105 |
142 |
| 2002 |
Ortiz, Ramon |
.232 |
.184 |
397 |
| 2000 |
Martinez, Pedro |
.232 |
.078 |
53 |
| 2001 |
Buehrle, Mark |
.234 |
.108 |
165 |
| 1998 |
Irabu, Hideki |
.235 |
.156 |
348 |
| 2001 |
Mays, Joe |
.237 |
.107 |
155 |
| 2002 |
Moyer, Jamie |
.238 |
.121 |
232 |
*Note that BABIP is approximate as HBP are not factored in, and BF
is merely H+BB+Outs. It is far from accurate, but close enough to
show that the two statistics do not correlate.
There really does not appear to be any correlation. Just to be sure,
I looked at the average HR/9 ranking for every group of 20 players
as I went down the list.
| BABIP Ranking |
Average HR/9 Ranking |
| 1-20 |
195.7 |
| 21-40 |
193.25 |
| 41-60 |
226.8 |
| 61-80 |
185.9 |
| 81-100 |
197.1 |
| 101-120 |
186.75 |
| 121-140 |
228.9 |
| 141-160 |
196.4 |
| 161-180 |
233.65 |
| 181-200 |
176.8 |
| 201-220 |
229.25 |
| 221-240 |
245.55 |
| 241-260 |
190.25 |
| 261-280 |
200.55 |
| 281-300 |
217.2 |
| 301-320 |
170.15 |
| 321-340 |
190.15 |
| 341-360 |
226.9 |
| 361-380 |
231.4 |
| 381-407 |
159 |
That looks like more evidence to show there is no connection. There
is no pattern to those rankings at all, they are completely random.
In fact, if you were to compare strictly the top half of the league
in BABIP with the bottom half, you would see that the top half averages
202nd overall in HR/9, and the bottom half averages 204th. That's
amazingly close and further proves there is no correlation between
these two statistics.
So, although my theory was proven incredibly false beyond any doubt,
I'm happy I did look into it, as not only did it give me more insight
into the game, but now it allows other people to keep from coming
up with the same incorrect theory.
