There are many different outcomes of a plate appearance – hit, strikeout, double, home run, walk, etc. Since 2002, statisticians found a new way to record the result of a batted ball as either a line drive, ground ball or fly ball – no matter if it was a hit or an out. Sometimes there is some subjectivity in recording these outcomes; two people can see the exact same play and one will say it’s a liner and the other will say it’s a fly ball. That’s what’s going on with FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. Both get their data from different sources (FanGraphs from Baseball Info Solutions and Baseball Reference from RetroSheet) and so there’s going to be some discrepancies in their results.

Using the Tigers’ projected starting 8 for 2013, here are the differences between FanGraphs and Baseball Reference using last year’s numbers (Victor Martinez is omitted because he didn’t play at all in 2012). The data from FanGraphs can be found by clicking here and the data from Baseball Reference can be found by clicking on the players’ names.

*Total batted balls should equal regardless of using FanGraphs or Baseball Reference. The difference here is that Baseball Reference categorized one of Dirks’ batted balls as a bunt. Further information can be found here.

Oftentimes people will give these results as a percentage or rate. To get this, simply divide the batted ball type by the total batted balls.

All of the differences are less than 5%, so it really doesn’t matter which site is used as the same conclusions can be drawn from using either site.

Practical use of this information can show if a player had good or bad fortune. Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) is an often used sabermetric stat to show "luck." It has more meaning by also including batted ball data, as a high line drive rate can inflate BABIP. So there could be a legitimate reason why someone has a high BABIP without attributing it to "luck."

BABIP = (H-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF)

An often underutilized sabermetric stat is xBABIP. xBABIP uses batted ball data to show what a player’s BABIP should have looked like. A higher xBABIP shows the player was "unlucky" while a lower xBABIP shows a player was "lucky." A quick calculation of xBABIP is to add .120 to the line drive rate. There are other xBABIP calcuations that use more batted ball data. The one I’m going to use can be found here.

xBABIP = (( GB – IFH ) * .159 + (FB-HR-IFFB) * .121 + LD * .750 + IFH + BUH ) / (GB + FB + LD + BU – HR – SH)

Where:

GB = Ground Balls

FB = Fly Balls

LD = Line Drives

HR = Home Runs

IFH = Infield hits

IFFB = Infield Fly Balls (AKA popups)

BU = Bunts

BUH = Bunt Hits

SH = Sacrifice Hits

Obviously two different sets of data can give two different results, which can be found below.

Again, there isn’t much difference with the biggest one being Jhonny Peralta, who’s BABIP falls between his FanGraphs’ xBABIP and his Baseball Reference’s xBABIP. So one set of data says that Peralta was "unlucky" and the other says he was "lucky."

It is also a good idea to compare a player’s BABIP to his career BABIP as some players tend to over-perform or under-perform their xBABIP. More complicated xBABIP calculations could also include ballpark factors.