What goes into the BABIP rating?

[KingDavis]

The rating sort of seems like a weird rating to me as I always thought it was more of a measure of luck than a stat you can control. That said, it seems to be operating as a stand in for contact quality in the game to me (as we don't have launch angles, exit velos, barrel rates, etc)?

Players with high BABIPs over a career generally have 1 (or more) of: 1) hard contact, 2) line drive launch angles (MLB classifies this as between 10-25), or 3) being fast. Including speed in a BABIP rating when there is a speed rating seems like double counting speed, so I'd think it's the first two.

The players with the highest BABIPs in a standard game with 100% scouting are Nolan Jones and Brandon Marsh with 80 and 81/100 respectively. Riley Greene, Edouard Julien, Lazaro Armenteros, Josh Lowe and Evan Carter are all above 75.

Looking at the two criteria those guys are as follows:

Brandon Marsh: 12.4 degree launch angle, 91.3 mph exit velo (81%)
Nolan Jones: 9.8 degree, 90.1 mph (65%)
Riley Greene: 6.6 degree, 91.6 mph (85%)
Edouard Julien: 8.0 degree, 89.5 mph (55%)
Josh Lowe: 14.3 degree, 89.1 mph (44%)
Evan Carter: 9.0 degree, 89 mph (40%)

None of those players were in the top 30 in BABIP last year. This part makes sense to me as it's not really seen as stat that people can control for the most part. My question then is, why are some of these guys rated where they are? At least the ones with 40-50s percentile exit velos. Like what is it based off of?

Take Freddie Freeman for example. He led the league in BABIP and had a launch angle of 14.7 degrees (and is at 12.2 for his career) and his average exit velo was in the 63 percentile. How is his rating 7 points lower than Josh Lowe's?

Or Yandy Diaz who was 2nd in the league. He had a 5.7 degree launch angle (admittedly a bit low to be a line drive) and a 98 percentile exit velo. How is that 16 points lower than Riley Greene?

Or Bryce Harper who is basically the ideal profile for high BABIP and was 5th in the league. He has a 66 rating. He had 87 percentile exit velo and a 9.1 degree launch angle. How is his rating 11 points lower than Evan Carter?

Does anyone have more information about what goes into the rating in the game?

[RonCo]

BABIP is just BABIP. It is a skill for hitters, but not so much for pitchers.

[Guthrien]

Originally Posted by RonCo

BABIP is just BABIP. It is a skill for hitters, but not so much for pitchers.

Pitchers are rated by BABIP too. BABIP is a useful stat by itself for both because it allows you to get an idea of whether a hitter or pitcher is having bad luck over a short sample. When your lights out reliever has an ERA of 4.90 over 24 innings and you see his BABIP is far above both his and the league average, you know he's having a bad stretch of luck.

It's a skill because batters and pitchers have (often) repeatable averages of this number, but it's probably the best antitode for low/high expectations at times. It makes sense as a stat in OOTP to boost high contact hitters. What accounts for BABIP is probably more than just bat to barrel but it's probably been studied.

[KingDavis]

Originally Posted by RonCo

BABIP is just BABIP. It is a skill for hitters, but not so much for pitchers.

It’s a stat for both, as well as (to some degree) a skill. It’s much less of a skill than say plate discipline because you can’t control where to hit it that much. At times you can of course but it’s not repeatable or baseball wouldn’t work.

But I’m simply asking what goes into it. From my understanding some of the ratings, like those I’ve highlighted, don’t seem to make that much sense. I just wasn’t sure if there was some was missing.

[KingDavis]

Originally Posted by Guthrien

Pitchers are rated by BABIP too. BABIP is a useful stat by itself for both because it allows you to get an idea of whether a hitter or pitcher is having bad luck over a short sample. When your lights out reliever has an ERA of 4.90 over 24 innings and you see his BABIP is far above both his and the league average, you know he's having a bad stretch of luck.

It's a skill because batters and pitchers have (often) repeatable averages of this number, but it's probably the best antitode for low/high expectations at times. It makes sense as a stat in OOTP to boost high contact hitters. What accounts for BABIP is probably more than just bat to barrel but it's probably been studied.

It has been. Broadly it’s mostly influenced by launch angle. Fly balls have the lowest BABIP, line drives the highest, and ground balls in the middle. BABIP generally goes up as LA goes down (to a point). The second most important factor (historically) has been batted ball distribution, because if you hit it in the same place a lot teams would shift. How that changed this year I don’t think has been studied. Speed is another factor because if you run faster then obviously you’d convert more grounders to hits, but like I said double counting speed there doesn’t seem to make sense so I didn’t look at it.

[Rain King]

The standard game roster set starts with a base from a projection system.

This has been PECOTA in the past. Last I heard, they use ZIPS. The ratings get further adjusted from there, but they start with something like that.

Freddie Freeman had a .370 BABIP last year and Josh Lowe came in at .357.

The others in your list.

Brandon Marsh: .397
Nolan Jones: .401
Riley Greene: .384
Edouard Julien: .371
Evan Carter: .412

Those players all had great BABIP, they just didn't have enough plate appearances to officially qualify for any leaderboard that cuts that off.

Freeman is 34 and Lowe is 26. The projections systems are likely moving them in opposite directions.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by KingDavis

It’s a stat for both, as well as (to some degree) a skill. It’s much less of a skill than say plate discipline because you can’t control where to hit it that much. At times you can of course but it’s not repeatable or baseball wouldn’t work.

But I’m simply asking what goes into it. From my understanding some of the ratings, like those I’ve highlighted, don’t seem to make that much sense. I just wasn’t sure if there was some was missing.

It is a stat for both, but it is a solid skill for hitters, and barely one (if it really is) for pitchers.

In the older OOTPs (i.e V23 and earlier), pitcher BABIP did not exist for any pitchers but knuckleballers, but it did exist for hitters. In other words, when the results got tabulated, pitchers used the game's league average as defined in the league totals as their skill level, and hitters had their actual rating. Now, mostly (I think) because PT wanted something to differentiate mega-pitchers seasons, OOTP pitchers are given a BABIP rating that is used rather than "league average." Theoretically that number is supposed to be very close to league average, but I admit Im not really sure it is.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by KingDavis

It has been. Broadly it’s mostly influenced by launch angle. Fly balls have the lowest BABIP, line drives the highest, and ground balls in the middle. BABIP generally goes up as LA goes down (to a point). The second most important factor (historically) has been batted ball distribution, because if you hit it in the same place a lot teams would shift. How that changed this year I don’t think has been studied. Speed is another factor because if you run faster then obviously you’d convert more grounders to hits, but like I said double counting speed there doesn’t seem to make sense so I didn’t look at it.

You're talking about real baseball. Don't over-think this. For OOTP, BABIP is simply the rate at which a hitter/pitcher matchup results in a hit if the ball is hit in play.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Guthrien

Pitchers are rated by BABIP too. BABIP is a useful stat by itself for both because it allows you to get an idea of whether a hitter or pitcher is having bad luck over a short sample. When your lights out reliever has an ERA of 4.90 over 24 innings and you see his BABIP is far above both his and the league average, you know he's having a bad stretch of luck.

It's a skill because batters and pitchers have (often) repeatable averages of this number, but it's probably the best antitode for low/high expectations at times. It makes sense as a stat in OOTP to boost high contact hitters. What accounts for BABIP is probably more than just bat to barrel but it's probably been studied.

It is a skill for batters because batters have numbers that tend to repeat over the years (like HR rate...which is Power in OOTP). It is either not a skill for pitchers, or barely one, because it is a value that either has no predictive value year-over-year for pitchers, or if it does, it's so slight that it's exteremely hard to find. In the context of what OOTP does, I think it is fundamentally better if pitchers had no BABIP skill at all, but that causes problems for PT and other various historical situations.

[RonCo]

This is why, for real pitchers, after adjusting for defense and whatnot, you can generally use their BABIP as an indicator of how "lucky" they were. For hitters, once a fair sample size has been reached, it reveals a level of skill.

BABIP has been a rating for OOTP hitters since the day OOTP went to the DIPS-base engine. What was it 2006? I don't recall specifically. But it has been there for a very long time. I believe it has only been a skill for pitchers since v24.