BABIP now a rating on batter's page?

[PSUColonel]

The entire problem for me is that BABIP and PBABIP are results..not predictors.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

The entire problem for me is that BABIP and PBABIP are results..not predictors.

Huh? Not predictors of what?

The correlation of year to year BABIP maybe low (as I think most stats are, year to year), but the correlation of 2 and 3 year BABIP with 3 and 4 year BABIP is high. You can pretty much guarantee that leaders in BABIP over the last few years will be leaders in BABIP next year. Just look at the past few years, many of the same names, like Freddie Freeman, keep popping up year after year.

And if anyone thinks, who cares about BABIP, what does it matter? Just compare the BABIP leaders with the wOBA or wRC+ leaders. Again, the same names keep popping up. It's not the end all be all, some players who have sub .300 BABIPs over the last few years, like Soto, Betts, Olson and Tucker, are still wOBA and wRC+ leaders, but even most of their BABIPs I wouldn't call bad. They're certainly not 2023 Yankees bad. I think a team would do pretty well if they based their acquisition of batters based solely on their BABIP.

And if what you mean is, just because a player gets off to a hot or cold BABIP start doesn't mean they'll keep it up. Well, no, of course not, they'll probably regress to their career average, especially if they're an established player, but again, the same goes for probably any stat, just like a player who starts the year hitting a bunch of home runs. It might be an indication that they've changed their approach, like they're trying to hit more LDs than GBs, or maybe they're swinging for the fences, but again their career BABIP can predict their future BABIP.

EDIT: Thinking about it even more, in this context it's a rating, not a stat, so of course it's predictive.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Canary85

well, babip was always a hidden rating using some formula of the player's other hit tools except for plate discipline. similar to how contact quality, launch angle, and exit velo are what you would use irl to try and guess a player's babip.

anyway it's my understanding that babip has a public rating now because of perfect team players who are looking for any kind of edge with the single digit rating system that PT uses. they want to know who has the high babip ratings so they can get good cards. i haven't touched PT since my first edition of OOTP because it is unfun. furthermore i am perfectly capable of using the 20-80 system to intuit what a player's likely babip is going to be in my offline and online leagues that i play in.

hopefully this is something you can toggle on and off in the league settings because i think it is stupid.

100% agree

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

The entire problem for me is that BABIP and PBABIP are results..not predictors.

Exit Velocity is also a result. Bat Speed, Pitch Velocity and Rotation Speed are all results. How far down the causal rabbit-hole do you want to go?

[Ktulu]

Originally Posted by uruguru

Exit Velocity is also a result. Bat Speed, Pitch Velocity and Rotation Speed are all results. How far down the causal rabbit-hole do you want to go?

Exit Velocity isn't a player rating.

Bat Speed, Velocity and Rotation speed are measurable, that doesn't make them a "Result" in the context of the topic.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

Exit Velocity isn't a player rating.

Bat Speed, Velocity and Rotation speed are measurable, that doesn't make them a "Result" in the context of the topic.

I mean, including player ratings for that kind of thing would take us further down the physics-based rabbit hole. I've advocated elsewhere for revamping the pitch system so that it uses the amount of break as a stand-in for stuff (you might still want/need a "deceptiveness" rating for Stuff because, like, sometimes a good slider will be hard for either handed hitter to hit).

The thing is, though, BABIP already exists as a player rating. You can argue that it should go away (to be replaced by what, exactly?) but if it's there, you should be able to see it, not infer it from other variables that you can see.

[Ktulu]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The thing is, though, BABIP already exists as a player rating. You can argue that it should go away (to be replaced by what, exactly?) but if it's there, you should be able to see it, not infer it from other variables that you can see.

I just disagree with that. I'm all for hidden underlying ratings in the editor that influence the visible ratings. Without fog of war the game is too easy.

Also have you ever read a scouting report that described a player's BABIP as a trait?

[NoOne]

you could always guesstimate what BABIP was based on Contact and power.

babip + avoid ks + power = contact .. some weighted average of those three. wouldn't be hard to map it out with a little screwing around in the editor.

with pitchers, i definitely see correlation between pitches and babip.. e.g. a knuckleballer of decent quality will have a lower BABIP than other pitchers.

pitches that it can be mathematically linked to a lower babip are likely in the game that way too. if oyu can find quantitative data out there that is fairly readily available that along with results in the game can help you deduce if it is in the game that way... look at better picthers' careers.. less fog of war in the results. this is definitely one of those stats you want 4-5 years worth of data whiel they don't change drastically in ratings and not looking at 1 year averages.

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

I just disagree with that. I'm all for hidden underlying ratings in the editor that influence the visible ratings. Without fog of war the game is too easy.

Also have you ever read a scouting report that described a player's BABIP as a trait?

Yes. It's the Hit tool.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

Yes. It's the Hit tool.

Then why not call it that?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

I just disagree with that. I'm all for hidden underlying ratings in the editor that influence the visible ratings. Without fog of war the game is too easy.

Also have you ever read a scouting report that described a player's BABIP as a trait?

I have a whole ream of those scouting reports from the 80s that don't literally mention BABIP because it didn't exist as a term you could use to describe something but there are lots and lots of "this guy doesn't strike out much but he pops the ball up a lot" or "X thinks he's a power hitter and tries to pull everything and hit everything into the air; he should try to top the ball more". The latter, I'm sure, is going to get argued that OKAY BUT WE HAVE THESE but the thing is, *those* ratings, for better or for worse in OOTP, are the cosmetic ones whereas BABIP is the one that matters.

The thing is, like it or not, the data is in that BABIP, unlike clutch hitting, for example, is a skill that hitters have and that they retain from one season to the next. It ought to be more variable than Avoid Ks and I think it is to some degree but that's a different argument. And, like, this isn't even new information: BABIP being a thing for hitters is something we've known and confirmed for 20+ years now. Some guys get there by hitting a lot of line drives, others get there through speed, but one way or the other, it's a thing, and as has been noted in other posts, OOTPD simply does not have the resources to rework the engine to have separate "line drive" and "speed to first base" ratings.

I personally just leave ratings off entirely with the exception of Draft Day. If you don't like some of the ratings that exist, you could do the same. My own reasoning has more to do with how scouting works than the ratings themselves but YMMV I guess.

[Canary85]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

Yes. It's the Hit tool.

no it isn't. yoan moncada does not have a 70 hit tool for routinely running a 350 babip. good lord. hit tool is about not whiffing and still getting good enough contact to find grass. like luis arraez or steven kwan.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

Exit Velocity isn't a player rating.

Bat Speed, Velocity and Rotation speed are measurable, that doesn't make them a "Result" in the context of the topic.

BABIP is also measureable, though. All of those things are interrelated and measurable, and contribute to BABIP.

It really all depends on whether you are comfortable where the OOTP draws the line at abstraction.

We could have strength and fast-twitch ratings for players that result in bat speed. Then we could have hand-size, arm-length and core strength ratings to result in pitch velocity. The from bat speed and pitch velocity we could calculate exit velocity. And once we have that, we wouldn't need BABIP.

Or we could just have BABIP.

[Markakis2014]

I think the issue with having the BABIP rating is that we already have more descriptive things in the game, like Gap power, groundball tendencies, pull tendencies, those are the things that influence BABIP for hitters. It's less a matter of "I want this to go deeper" and more "we already went deeper, why not use it".

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Markakis2014

I think the issue with having the BABIP rating is that we already have more descriptive things in the game, like Gap power, groundball tendencies, pull tendencies, those are the things that influence BABIP for hitters. It's less a matter of "I want this to go deeper" and more "we already went deeper, why not use it".

But they aren't though, All the groundball/pull/etc. are the cosmetic parts where under the hood BABIP is the actual rating. I'm sure the game correlates dead pull hitting with lower BABIP, etc. but at the end of the day BABIP is not a composite rating built out of others the way that, for example, Movement as shown on the main screen is a. a stand-in for HR rate and b. is a compilation of the actual Movement rating, the pitcher's flyball rate, and the effects that their pitches have on HR rate as well.

Try it out for yourself: if you go into the editor and change a hitter from being a dead pull hitter to a spray hitter, their BABIP will not go up.

This is not a criticism of the game, this is an acknowledgment that this is how the game is built and that asking for all these other things to actually make up BABIP is asking the devs to completely rework part of the engine, which in turn is a far, far bigger ask than people think it is.

[Canary85]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

But they aren't though, All the groundball/pull/etc. are the cosmetic parts where under the hood BABIP is the actual rating. I'm sure the game correlates dead pull hitting with lower BABIP, etc. but at the end of the day BABIP is not a composite rating built out of others the way that, for example, Movement as shown on the main screen is a. a stand-in for HR rate and b. is a compilation of the actual Movement rating, the pitcher's flyball rate, and the effects that their pitches have on HR rate as well.

Try it out for yourself: if you go into the editor and change a hitter from being a dead pull hitter to a spray hitter, their BABIP will not go up.

This is not a criticism of the game, this is an acknowledgment that this is how the game is built and that asking for all these other things to actually make up BABIP is asking the devs to completely rework part of the engine, which in turn is a far, far bigger ask than people think it is.

doesn't the babip rating determine the batted ball tendency? i do exports after each season with all ratings, stats, and splits, then use filters to find players who have similar ratings to compare performances. batted ball tendency seems to not be cosmetic based on what i see. say a player is 65/60/50/50/60, i'll find every player +/- 5 of those five ratings. the guys who are groundball will absolutely have lower slugging than those who have a different tendency. and line drive hitters will have a higher babip than those who are different. and this tracks season to season when a hitter's batted ball changes from normal to groundball (they perform worse) or groundball to line drive (they perform better).

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Canary85

doesn't the babip rating determine the batted ball tendency? i do exports after each season with all ratings, stats, and splits, then use filters to find players who have similar ratings to compare performances. batted ball tendency seems to not be cosmetic based on what i see. say a player is 65/60/50/50/60, i'll find every player +/- 5 of those five ratings. the guys who are groundball will absolutely have lower slugging than those who have a different tendency. and line drive hitters will have a higher babip than those who are different. and this tracks season to season when a hitter's batted ball changes from normal to groundball (they perform worse) or groundball to line drive (they perform better).

There are correlations baked into the game, I'm sure, especially when you use historicals, and I'm also sure that when guys have a boost to their power or whatever the game will also make them not groundball hitters anymore once they hit a certain threshold.