BABIP is an interesting statistic that many regard as a measure of how lucky a player is or not.
The metric attempts to calculate what percent of balls batted safely into play result in a hit.
An unlucky player would be defined as one who frequently puts balls into play but fails to convert those in-play ball to hits.
The formula generally used to calculate BABIP is: BABIP = (H-HR) / (AB-K-HR+SF) As you can see the numerator is the number of hits the runner has recorded.
Since homeruns are not considered in play they are removed from the calculation.
The denominator calculates how may at bats resulted in a ball put into play.
So strikeouts and home runs are removed from the calculation.
Furthermore, sacrifice flies, which are not counted as at-bats are added back.
Many consider a BABIP of less than .
300 to be an indicator that a player has had his fair of bad luck and things should turnaround as his statistics regress toward the mean.
However, it is probably best to interpret BABIP by comparing the players current BABIP to his historic averages.
For example, Jimmy Rollins who is profiled in this weeks cover story currently has a BABIP of .
218.
Historically he has had a BABIP for the season from .
280-.
310.
So, one would conclude that a talented player like JR is due for a turnaround, unless he is hiding an injury.
In summary, BABIP is one of the best statistics for identifying under performers.
For that reason it is one of the main drivers in our Hot Pick ups section.
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