Fun With Sabermetrics - Day 1 - BABIP

Welcome to Fun With Sabermetrics because I'm bored and have had a baseball boner for so long I need to call that hotline that Cialis gives out at the end of their commercials. These posts will consist of me walking you amateurs through Sabermetrics. As you might not know because you're busy going to college and getting jobs while I'm busy looking at the 1987 Texas Rangers box scores, "Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity rather than industry activity such as attendance." I know, right? It's dumb. It's over-analysis. But it's kind of cool, and you heard it here first: it's going to get big. In the next decade you're going to start seeing a lot more of this, because it's actually pretty accurate shit.

So let's start out easy.

BABIP - Batting Average on Balls In Play

Pretty much the quintessential stat for every day hitters, it basically measures the amount of base hits a player has for every time they hit a playable ball. So no home runs, remember that. Many say it's a statistic of luck, but that's bullsh. A hit is a hit is a hit, and the ability to get good bat on the ball isn't luck. Formula is as follows:

So in the words of Double Rainbow Guy, "What does this mean?" Well shut up for a second and let me tell you. Using someone we all know and want to be inside of love.

Elvis' is pretty easy to calculate, because he doesn't strike out a lot and he totaled ZERO for both HRs and SFs in 2010.

So. For '10 his standard BA was .265. 156 hits, basic math tells us that's the numerator. 588 at-bats minus 96 Ks equals 492, your denumerator or whatever the hell it's called. 156 divided by 492, bam, you got a BABIP of .317 for Mr Andrus, meaning almost 32 percent of all balls put into the diamond by Elvis will fall for base hits. The over/under for the league is about .300, so Elvis is a bit above the average, most likely due to his speed and the ability to beat out BIP that the fatass Milwaukee Brewers first-basemens of the world wouldn't be able to.

So there you have it. BABIP. Go take on the world.