[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by 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.

It happens in Majors too. Good pitchers keep hitters off balance so they don't make solid contact. The less solid contact hitters make, the fewer hits they are likely to get. However, there is no metric for "solid contact". BABIP does not differentiate betweeen hard hit balls and tappers. For that matter, it won't tell you if the hits were scattered over six innings or all in a row. In many ways it's a meaningless stat.

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?

Perhaps. Or, Maddux was in situations where he didn't have to knuckle down and go after hitters, so if he gave up a few more hits it didn't matter to him as far as the outcome of the game was concerned.

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.

Data may or may not show trends or correllations, but that does not mean the data for BABIP may be very meaningful in evaluating how good a pitcher is. As I said earlier in the thread, the only "repeatable skill" a pitcher needs to have is the ability to give his team a chance to win. What he does to give his team that chance (as he cannot control how many run his team will score for him) is made up of many variables and not all of these can be quantified or show logical relationships.

There are stats that are useful. But stats are just tools in the box, and not every tool is applicable for the job at hand. You must be very careful in using your tools correctly. You use a hammer if everything looks like a nail to you, but baseball is not just nails. Advanced stats have their place as long a they are used correctly, not as a replacement for other tools that are also very useful, or if their outputs are considered the final say in a matter.