[knockahoma]

We don't need a cautionary tale.

Maybe you don't, Lynch. But I can go back to the last two BABIP threads, point you to other threads on the internet and show you people trying to shut down the conversation. I can't tell you the names, but if you ask me to, I'll go the the previous threads and bring back at least 5 to 10 posts saying, basically, the conversation on BABIP is over! Doctrine! If you need me to get those, I will. Maybe you'll see what I was thinking, then.

The rest of your post gets back on to BABIP itself and that interests me. I'll break down your post for comment:

If you want to put together evidence and try to draw conclusions from it... then do that. Don't randomly punch around baseball-reference picking an example here and an example there while ignoring hundreds of examples who don't meet the criteria for which you are looking.

Geez, man, come on! I've just begun. Even Bill James and Tango must have had at least 5 days to gather all their info and write their books!

It's pretty simple: There is a ton of evidence that a lot of what people used to consider pitching skill is actually defense. It's so intuitive that it's hard to believe how hard people will argue against it.

I agree with that. Now, before you slam me, stop and think about something. Who started the Mark Belanger thread? Who argued intensely that Belanger made a serious contribution to his team, despite a .225 BA?

Now, I just read Vogon and once again, his greater knowledge of the new research has saved the day for me. I also like what Tango wrote. But, there will come a day when we'll better see BABIP control in a single season.

It will come with MPH on balls in play, location of hits, etc. And that will help us to see what a fielder sees behind this pitcher, or that. What will it tell us when one pitcher's balls in play are on average 5 MPH slower than another's?

Just as a quick aside, I was thinking about line drives while we were walking the border collie last night. As a shortstop, a one-hopper was basically a line drive to me-- and almost always, the TOUGHER kind. The ball just happened to hit the ground before it got to the SS, just as a line drive does in CF. But in a pitchers Line drive rate, is such a one hopper to shortstop considered a line drive? Or is it a grounder? (don't answer that! I'll do my own research!

Makes it sound like such a less well hit ball on paper. In fact, the very first play I had in College at SS was a smokin' one hopper in that dreaded "in-between zone". It was recorded as a ground out to SS. But, it was hit much harder than that. And I don't mind telling you, after the play, I kicked around some dirt as the bench cheered, while I tried to get my heart from my throat back down to my chest. It was more fear of failure than of the ball.

Anyway, here's what Vogon posted:

Here you go: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/inde..._dips_numbers/

You can get a pitcher's "true" BABIP by adding 3700 league average balls in play to his numbers.

Let's say we're looking at Greg Maddux in 1992. He had a .257 BABIP on 756 BIP. 3700/(756+3700)=.83, so we regress his BABIP 83% of the way back to the mean. Atlanta's BABIP that year was .287, so we'll use that. 83%*.287 + 17%*.257 = .282.

If all we know about Maddux is what he did in 1992, then we would assume a "true" BABIP of .282. His actual .257 BABIP was a combination of 17% skill and 83% fielding/ballpark/luck/etc. as best as we can tell.

We, of course, know a lot more about Maddux than just 1992. For his career he had 15,285 BIP. Regression equals 3700/(15285+3700) = .195, so we regress his career BABIP less than 20%. His actual BABIP was .286 versus a league average of .295. .286*80.5% + .295*19.5% = .288. That's our best estimate of his true BABIP for his whole career.

And here's what Tango said about BABIP, summed up, bold mine:

Tom Tango recently began a stats wiki page, which includes an entry for BABIP. In that entry he states “for a pitcher, seasonal BABIP is a largely unreliable measure of his skill. In order for this metric to do a good job in measuring his skill, you need several seasons worth of data. This leads to the myth that a pitcher's skill in hit prevention is mostly the product of luck: we can't see year-to-year consistency in the metric as the noise overwhelms the signal. But, as we increase the number of years, the signal can finally match the noise.”[/


BABIP - Sabermetrics

When I first started reading about BABIP on this site, the implications of that stat were relayed to me in the language of Voros McCracken. Since then, guys like Tango, Tippet, etc, have changed that language. I very much like how they're describing it.

I guess, in order to see how close you and I are, I'd ask you to comment on Vogon and Tango's language.