Career BABIP: Two Tigers Top List
Now that FanGraphs goes all the way back to the before time I thought I'd sort all players ever by BABIP. The top two all-time are both Tigers: Ty Cobb (.372), and ... Austin Jackson (.369).
This is a stat that's supposed to basically mean luck. However it's also filled with control hitters. Guys among the post-1900 leaderboard with 5,000+ PAs: Cobb, Hornsby, Shoeless Joe, Rod Carew, Jeter, Ichiro, Heilmann, Bill Terry, Miguel Cabrera. Everyone in the top 30 has a way, way higher OBP thank AJax.
Most HoF hitters have very high BABIPs. I've seen enough screaming ground balls become hits for Cabby to know power has something to do with this.
What about AJAX? He has two years in the books, both with relatively high BABIP. He's still well within the small sample size rule. Has he been unreasonably lucky, or is there something about his swing that puts 'em where they ain't?
6 months ago
Misopogon
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It's not so much luck or skill
It’s more like a way to gauge sustainability. With each player you have to calibrate the gauge differently by using their career BABIP. IMO, the sustainable range is about +/- 10% of their career BABIP.
A player with a career .300 BABIP, can sustain a .270 to .330 BABIP.
A player with a career .330 BABIP, can sustain a .297 to .363 BABIP.
A player with a career .360 BABIP, can sustain a .324 to .396 BABIP.
AJax has a career .369 BABIP, so he can sustain a .332 to .405 BABIP.
Anything lower or higher than what’s in the their BABIP range can be attributed to hot or cold streaks, and luck.
The margin of error on Austin should be higher to reflect the low number of seasons.
High enough even that I’m not sure that he’s projectable at all yet.
As with anything, the larger the sample size the better.
What sabermetrics should do is come up with a UZR type stat for hitting. But I guess first they’d have to fix UZR.
UZR needs about 100,000 more zones to make it even remotely accurate (they currently use only 64 zones), make better use of batted ball data, and consider where the fielder is positioned at beginning of each play.
by Keith-Allen on Nov 22, 2011 12:38 PM EST up reply actions
simply put
a player who can consistently hit a high percentage of line drives is going to have a high BABIP. Based on Austin’s career and minor league numbers, .350 is completely sustainable, but I wouldn’t put my bets on him staying above .370 too often.
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