[jbergey22]

I think the talent levels at the MLB level from both the hitters and pitchers kind of make this work out.

I can certainly see CB Dave's point in that at lower levels the pitcher can certainly cause the hitter a lot of frustration and put the ball in play weakly cause less hits on balls in play for the hitter.

Maddux certainly did appear to have an influence on how many weakly hit grounders were hit on him however despite that his BABIP was higher than league average a few years. Perhaps many of these weakly hit grounders end up being infield singles?

The numbers just work out and plenty of data backs it up. I think a case could be made that the ball comes off the bat differently against certain pitchers however the results are still very similar at the MLB level.

I didnt buy this at one time either but just too much data out there right now is convincing.

Maddux may have given up weaker singles than a Livan Hernadez type but it still appeared they were working within the same range as far as BABIP goes. These were very extreme examples because Maddux was usually on the lower end of BABIP while Livan was usually on the upper end of BABIP.

Oddly enough its the fly ball pitchers that generally generate a little lower BABIP than the groundball pitchers. Hence the "limited" control addition to the original findings.