Batting Stats 4: BABIP

We’ll look at one last easy stat before the hard stuff.

BABIP is a very interesting stat because it acts as a kind of sanity check on all of the other stats a player produces.  It shows Batting Average on Balls in Play and average in most professional leagues is around .300.  A player with a career average well above that generally hits the ball hard.  A player with a career BABIP well below that mark often makes weak contact.  That’s an OK measure in itself, but it serves a much better purpose. If, during the course of a season, a player is putting up exceptional numbers, checking his BABIP against his career average will give you a sense of whether he’s getting lucky and likely to regress or if he’s turned a corner and upped his game.

The formula for BABIP is pretty straightforward:
(H - HR) / (AB - K - HR + SF)

The whole Megillah up to this point, then, is:

#Calculated batting stats for OOTP
    DROP TABLE IF EXISTS CalcBatting;
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS CalcBatting AS

    SELECT b.year
    , b.league_id
    , b.player_id
    , b.stint #We can eventually move this down the list
    , b.split_id #We can eventually remove
    , b.team_id #We can eventually move this down the list
    , l.abbr as Lg
    , t.abbr as Team
    , b.g
    , b.ab
    , @PA := b.ab+b.bb+b.sh+b.sf+b.hp AS PA
    , b.r 
    , b.h
    , b.d
    , b.t
    , b.hr
    , b.rbi
    , b.sb
    , b.cs
    , b.bb
    , b.k
    , b.ibb
    , b.hp
    , b.sh
    , b.sf
    , b.gdp
    , b.ci
    , @BA := round(b.h/b.ab,3) AS ba
    , round(b.k/@PA,3) as krate
    , round((b.bb)/@PA,3) as bbrate
    , @OBP := round((b.h + b.bb + b.hp)/(@PA-b.sh-b.ci),3) AS obp
    , round(100*(@OBP/r.woba),0) as OBPplus
    , @SLG := round((b.h+b.d+2*b.t+3*b.hr)/b.ab,3) as slg
    , round(@OBP+@SLG,3) as ops
    , round(@SLG-@BA,3) as iso
    , round((b.h-b.hr)/(b.ab-b.k-b.hr+b.sf),3) as babip
    /* NOT yet modified for OOTP and MySQL
    , round((r.wobaBB*nz(b.bb,0) + r.wobahb*nz(b.hbp,0) + r.woba1b*(b.h-b.[2b]-b.[3b]-b.hr) + r.woba2b*b.[2b] + r.woba3b*b.[3b] + r.wobahr*b.hr)/(b.ab+nz(b.bb,0)-nz(b.ibb,0)+nz(b.sf,0)+nz(b.hbp,0)),3) as woba
    , round((([woba]-r.lgwoba)/r.wobascale)*[PA],1) as wRAA
    , round(((([woba]-r.lgwoba)/r.wobascale)+(l.totr/l.totpa))*[PA],0) as wRC
    , ((([wRAA]/[PA] + l.RperPA) + (l.RperPA - t.bpf*l.RperPA))/(lb.wRC/lb.PA))*100 AS [wRC+]
    */
    FROM 
      players_career_batting_stats b 
      INNER JOIN leagues l ON b.league_id=l.league_id 
      INNER JOIN teams t ON b.team_id=t.team_id
      INNER JOIN tblRunValues2 r ON b.year=r.year AND b.league_id=r.league_id
    WHERE b.ab<>0 AND b.split_id=1
    ORDER BY b.player_id, b.year