BABIP, or Why Some People Might Make the Wrong Statistical Conclusion

Note: Most of this article was written in early September, so the information on Morse may not be especially important.  However, my desire to finally complete this post is to address something broader about statistical analysis and Morse is a good example to use in this instance.

Wander around the internets or, perhaps, spend time (a lot of time) at the ball park and you may hear about how certain hitters have been lucky or unlucky.  The comments could be as specific as how line drives are being hit straight at the third baseman, less specific by mentioning BABIP, or even less specific by indicating how performance marks in general are not up to peak career marks.  What I want to comment on is the conversation right in the middle: BABIP.

The general idea of a player being unlucky with with respect to Batting Average of Ball In Play (BABIP) is based on the population trend that the value is consistent.  That is if a component of the population is hitting 50 points over their average, they tend to revert back to their average.  Mike Morse's career BABIP is .333 while his current season BABIP is .267.  If Morse has suffered a simple fluke in the distribution of his batted bats (like most players most of the time) then we should expect that he will revert back to a .333 BABIP in the future.

That expectation dismisses his current performance of 226/283/410 and suggests he should be more in line with 280/340/480.  Having hits drop in, as you can see, can greatly increase a player's worth.  However, we need to remember that this assumption is based on the measure of a population as compared to the measure of individuals.  In other words, a forest might look incredibly healthy from afar, but up close you see that a couple trees are dying.  It is a matter of resolution.

In general, it is fine to say that given such a broad resolution that it is plausible to expect a player like Mike Morse to bounce back from such an uncharacteristic BABIP.  If this is as far as you go, then you might forget what actually impacts changes in BABIP.

The three major components of BABIP are:

1) Defense - Although the unbalanced schedule makes for the possibility of BABIP to be team specific due to differences in stadium design (e.g., Fenway) or general differences in defensive aptitude, usually it all washes out.  Defenses are very similar to each other and there is enough overlap between schedules that a batter essentially faces a league average defense over the course of a season.

2) Random Variation - For no good reason that we have been able to discern, sometimes a player tends to hit more balls in defensible territory than normal.  There seems to be little ability for a hitter to deftly place a ball to an empty spot on the field.  Think of the crazy shifts that are employed today and how no MLB hitter can exploit them with any regularity.

3) Talent - Talent is a combination of foot speed, batted ball type, as well as just how those batted balls travel.

Below is a good video that briefly reexplains what I just noted:

I do want to drill a little deeper on the talent portion of BABIP.  Why?  Because that is what changes in practice.  These chances in BABIP occur because players get stronger, more experienced, and refine their approaches.  Players can also age, adversely affecting their production, and get injured.  I compact them down to three things:

1) Foot speed - as a population, players tend to see a decrease in BABIP over the course of their careers as they lose speed.  This effects grounders almost exclusively and this trend tends to be very small due to how good defense is in the Majors unless a physiologically catastrophic event occurs to the player.

2) Batted Ball Type - again, as a population, balls that are grounders become hits 23% of the time, line drives fall in 69% of the time, and fly balls are wonderful for the hitter 13% of the time.  A player who tend to have more line drives than fly balls will tend to have a higher BABIP.  If something about the player changes the types of batted balls he hits, then that BABIP will change as well.

3) Types of Batted Ball Type - As we all know, a fly ball is not a fly ball is not a fly ball.  We tend to think of a Chris Davis moon shot flyball differently as opposed to a Nick Markakis fly ball.  Within grounders, line drives, and fly balls we get a lot of variety within those classifications.  Those differences can mean a great deal with respect to how well a player will perform.  Soft liners are easily to turn into outs than hard liners.  Shallow flies tend to be caught more often than deep flies (and we are not even considering how deep flies can turn into home runs).

Now, let us use Mike Morse as a vehicle for this discussion.  Below is a table indicating his previous performance.  His 2013 time with the Orioles is not included because I find performance after a trade to be not important with respect to making a trade because that portion is unknown.  Later we will revisit what he did for the Orioles.

Year	Age	Tm	PA	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	BABIP
2005	23	SEA	258	10	1	3	18	50	.278	.349	.370	97	.341
2006	24	SEA	48	5	0	0	3	7	.372	.396	.488	131	.421
2007	25	SEA	20	2	0	0	1	4	.444	.500	.556	184	.571
2008	26	SEA	11	1	0	0	1	4	.222	.364	.333	91	.400
2009	27	WSN	55	3	0	3	3	16	.250	.291	.481	101	.303
2010	28	WSN	293	12	2	15	22	64	.289	.352	.519	133	.330
2011	29	WSN	575	36	0	31	36	126	.303	.360	.550	147	.344
2012	30	WSN	430	17	1	18	16	97	.291	.321	.470	112	.339
2013	31	SEA	307	13	0	13	20	80	.226	.283	.410	98	.267

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/1/2013.

A good exercise is now to run through the different variables because upon looking at his .267 BABIP so far in 2013, we would think that he has been incredibly unlucky.  Why?  Because the greater population of baseball players tend to perform at their established career BABIP.  In other words, we should expect Morse to have a BABIP of about .330 to .340 if what has transgressed so far this season is due to random variation (aka balls finding gloves).

However, has his talent level changed?  If it has, then we would expect the BABIP to not be random and instead be a characteristic of that player.

Foot speed

Although Morse began his MLB career as a shortstop, foot speed was never a quality he enjoyed.  He may be slower, particularly with his quad injury that forced him on the disabled list in June through almost all of July.  That said, running out ground balls was simply not a major part of his game.  True, a loss of speed will negatively affect his performance somewhat as a loss in footspeed would result in a slight alteration in singles and doubles, but probably nothing profound.  His game is not a singles game and we do not see a great increase in hitting singles from would-be doubles.  I severely doubt foot speed has caused his BABIP to drop.

Change in Batted Ball Type

Another possibility would be that a leg injury could impact his mechanics and result in him creating a different proportion of fly balls.  The table below shows his batted ball types over the past nine seasons.  Again, I am not considering his time in Baltimore.

Apparently, the table failed to load properly when posting.  I will have to wait until tonight to correct it.  Until then, feel free to go over to Fangraphs here and see how similar his distribution is to his prime years to date.

From that table, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary.  It also appears that from this there is no great reason why we should suspect his poor hitting performance with respect to his BABIP is not a product of a change in batted ball percentages.

Types of Batted Ball Type

One thing that concerned me about Morse was that leg injuries can greatly impact power transfer from a player's lower half into the bat.  If that transfer is off, then swings become all arms, which greatly reduces the distance of those balls.  Even when you see a guy like Chris Davis flip a bat into the stands with only his arms, you can still see a portion of his power is coming up through his legs.  Below is a table showing Morse's average distance for his line drives and home runs.  These numbers are somewhat difficult to find on your own, so I decided to include his few Baltimore data points here.  To be clear here are the three designations for 2013: (a) Seattle before leg injury, (b) Seattle after leg injury, and (c) Baltimore.

	Line Drive (n)	Fly Ball (n)
2011	266 ft (72)	316 ft (141)
2012	249 ft (59)	309 ft (81)
2013a	276 ft (31)	302 ft (54)
2013b	230 ft (12)	298 ft (16)
2013c	189 ft (3)	269 ft (4)

When I look at the data above, I see potential red flags.  Looking at 2011, 2012, and 2013a, we see some variation in Line Drive distance, which I believe is normally highly variable.  That does not concern me.  What does concern me is the decrease in Fly Ball distance, which I think is a more stable number (again, though, I have not studied this, so this is a bit anecdotal).  I think his early season numbers this year were inflated due to solid line drive contact.  The decrease in his fly ball percentage makes this difficult.  For every 10 feet you lose in your average fly ball distance, the player experiences about a 20% decrease in home runs.  Now, I would not write him off completely long term, but I would be concerned that he might be a player who will flame out early even if he is healthy.

That said, the long term prognosis is not what we have interest in with Morse as a trade candidate.  As a trade candidate, we have more of a concern with respect to how well he performed after coming off the disabled list.  Now, 12 ground balls and 16 fly balls are a very, very small sample size (I assume, I do not know how many batted ball events are needed to stabilize one of these numbers, but I assume this is an accurate statement), but a drop of 46 ft in line drives and his fly balls falling below 300 ft were big concerns of mine.  That suggests to me that even though he was healthy enough to play baseball, he likely was not healthy enough to be Mike Morse and that is a significant issue.  That drop was a major reason why I panned the Avery for Morse deal.  The distance is an illustration that even though his BABIP is low in comparison to his career line, his current BABIP might be completely founded in a change in ability due to his leg injury.

Population vs Individual

This is a major issue for some who are new to baseball statistics and projections.  A good rule of thumb is to expect players to behave like the population of players behave.  This really is true about any population model.  It makes sense for drug trials and it makes sense for ecosystem assessments.  You will often be right more often if you make this assumption.  However, if you are able to assess a single individual, you may have some ability to tease apart the causes for a change in behavior.  For instance, your patient not doing well in the trial may have a secondary issue that causes him to respond differently to the drug.  Or perhaps, your pristine habitat does not act like other pristine habitats because someone is dumping all of their excess paint into the stream.  In Mike Morse's case, it should not have been expected of him to bounce back perhaps because there was an underlying cause (leg injury) and evidence (lack of batted ball distance) that suggested there were real issue there.

In other words, one should not be fundamentalist when it comes to assigning population responses to an individual.  It has been shown consistently that players suffer from variability in their performance.  Much of that wobbles back and forth each year as a result of chance, but there are also real issues that can cause a player to deviate from the expected path.  It is important to recognize these things.  Luck is not all.

How Has Mike Morse performed for the Orioles?

In 27 plate appearances, Morse has three singles and a walk.  He has a slash line of 115/148/115 and a OPS+ of -27.  His offense has been worth -4.1 runs, roughly meaning that in those 27 appearances he was responsible for about half of a loss in comparison to a replacement level player.  He saw 49 innings in the outfield and was credited for -7.5 runs when extrapolated out to a full season.  In other words, he played poor defense.  In a general sense, he has done nothing to improve the team and he cost the team a million dollars.  As you know, money is not a thing that is spent wildly in Baltimore, so losing a million hurts a little bit.  Add that to the loss of a genuine 4th/5th outfielder with options in Xavier Avery and the deal looks slightly worse.  Twenty three year old toolsy, poor skilled outfielders are not exactly a dime a dozen, but they are probably close.  Avery certainly has value and a scant chance at become something more like a second division starter.  With the paucity of talent in the Orioles upper minors, it does potentially hurt a little to give up on Avery's slight promise and his certain versatility.

What Happened to Xavier Avery? 

Avery logged 14 plate appearances over three games in AAA Tacoma.  He walked once, had a sacrifice hit, and had six hits, including a home run and a double.  He also managed a stolen base.  He started once at each outfield position.  For those three games, Avery was a wunderkind.  He was not added to the expanded roster in Seattle.  He is expected to be given a legitimate shot at the fourth outfield position with the club next year.  He is fully expected to log time at some point in Seattle next season.

Mike Wright at Norfolk

Going into the 2013 season, Baseball America ranked Mike Wright as the number 8 prospect in the Orioles' organization. He pitched half of 2012 at Bowie, and wasn't impressive. He returned to Bowie for 2013, and I happened to be in Bowie for what may have been anyone's most disappointing start in the year. Given a 7-0 lead in the seven-inning first game of a doubleheader, he gave it all back by the fourth inning and Bowie lost 11-8 in nine innings. What made the start more disappointing is that the doubleheader took so long that, per usual Bowie practice, the scheduled fireworks show had to be cancelled.

Mike Wright is one of the Orioles' better pitching prospects. (Elaina Ellis / Norfolk Tides)

Wright rebounded considerably after that game, and finished 11-3, with a 3.26 ERA. There were a few concerns - he allowed thirteen unearned runs, which means that his Run Average is 4.07; and he allowed more than one hit per inning pitched. Still, he was promoted to Norfolk to make the start in the Tides' final game of 2013.

Normally, the last game of a minor-league season, typically held on Labor Day, is taken somewhat less than seriously. The crowds are small; many of the players are recent arrivals; and almost all of the players want to get the game over with and go on. However, 2013 was different. The Tides needed to win to qualify for the International League playoffs, and were playing slightly harder than usual. Durham, on the other hand, had wrapped up its division title and had nothing else to play for. So Wright's performance may not mean as much as a normal start.

Wright pitched a good game. His basic boxscore line was 6 2/3 innings pitched, 6 hits, 0 runs, 0 walks, and 2 strikeouts, for a game score of 64. Since Durham was not interested in working the count, Wright probably was able to pitch longer than usual. His walks and strikeouts may also be lower than typical. Nevertheless, it was a good start.

Wright faced 26 batters:

Ground balls: 8
Fly balls: 11
Line drives: 5
Strikeouts: 2

This includes base hits, so the G/F ratio is different from the published totals, which only include outs. Wright wasn't a groundball pitcher in this game, which doesn't appear to be his usual pattern.

His pitches:

Balls: 31
Swinging strikes: 6
Called strikes: 17
Foul balls: 18
In play: 19

Wright didn't demonstrate swing-and-miss stuff. Below are the number of pitches he threw with various counts:

0-0: 26
1-0: 11
0-1: 13
2-0: 2
1-1: 11
0-2: 6
3-0: 1
2-1: 3
1-2: 10
3-1: 1
2-2: 7
3-2: 2

Because of the game circumstances, I wouldn't read too much into this data. He generally worked ahead of hitters and only made four pitches with a three-ball count. Three of those four pitches were in the same at-bat; he fell behind 3-0, worked the count to 3-2, and then the batter put the ball into play.

This game fits the classic profile of an innings-eating #4 or #5 starter. Mike Wright got ahead of batters without swing-and-miss stuff. He showed good control and worked efficiently. The best pitchers of his type will have one or two good years in the rotation before becoming injured or ineffective. Others are Josh Stinsons, who spend years in AAA starting rotations hoping for and occasionally getting a few big-league innings. Wright will likely start 2014 at Norfolk and we'll see what happens next.

Playoff Horizons: Can the Orioles Still See the Second Wild Card?

Another day, another Orioles' playoff column.  In this post, I try to explain how far back two games could be for the Orioles in their current situation, which may provide light as to why the team's playoff odds may seem too low.  One can think of the games back the Orioles are in the playoff hunt as a horizon where as long as the team can see the playoffs they are still capable of reaching it.  Once those playoffs dip below the horizon, then their day is over.  That second playoff Wild Card slot is what we can call the true horizon.  It is the absolute horizon.  You can think of that horizon as the one you experience every day in the real world.  It would be what you are physically capable of seeing based on the spherical nature of the earth.

However, you may notice that you rarely see the true horizon because you may be behind a stand of trees, a tall building, or down in a valley.  Those perspectives block the true horizon and instead your experienced horizon is actually something we call the visible horizon.  Similar to those objects preventing the view of the true horizon, the same can be said about other teams obscuring the Orioles view of the playoffs.  Without respect to the teams littered around the Orioles' current position, it may seem like the team is a mere two games back, but life often cannot be reduced to its most simple components.  I have yet to observe a spherical cow.

With this in mind, being two games back is not being two games, but how do we better appreciate the difficulties the Orioles are currently presented with?  John Dewan tried to better visualize this truth with his statistic Summed Games Back.  Below is the current Wild Card Scenario:

Rk	Tm	W	L	GB	GBsum
WC 1	TBR	83	69	---	---
WC 2	TEX	83	69	---	---
1	CLE	83	70	0.5	0.5
2	BAL	81	71	2.0	2.5
3	KCR	80	72	3.0	5.5
4	NYY	80	73	3.5	9.0

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/19/2013.

Baltimore looks OK either way here being two and a half games out in the GBsum perspective.  Of course, with only nine games left, that is not a position a team desires to be in, but it is good to still being in the playoff hunt at this point in the season.  The above table also illuminates the difficulties we might expect for the Kansas City Royals or the New York Yankees leap frogging over Baltimore and Cleveland to knock off the Texas Rangers or Tampa Bay Rays.  To that end, it looks like the Royals season is practically over and the Yankees require some form of divine intervention, a Jeter ex machina.

Another way to look at it is to figure out schedule strengths.  To do this I assume that the current winning percentages are a realistic estimation of the talent level of a squad.  I then use those assumptions as givens in Bill James' log5 calculation.  This will provide a base level expectation on how the season may likely end.  With that in mind, the teams now have certain marks they have to reach.

	OppPCT	Wins	ExWins	ExGB	ExGBs
Texas	.453	83	90	--	--
Cleveland	.389	83	90	--	--
Tampa	.508	83	88	2	2
Kansas City	.453	80	86	4	6
Baltimore	.538	81	86	4	6
New York	.448	80	85	5	15

Based on log5, the Orioles are expected to finish out the season going 5-5.  If Texas and Cleveland perform as log5 projects, then the Orioles need to go 9-1.  That is how influential Texas' footing is as well as Cleveland having the fortune of facing Houston (.333), Chicago (AL; .395), and Minnesota (.428) as opposed to the Orioles set of Red Sox (.604), Rays (.546), and Jays (.461).

No, not all is quite lost at this point, but one probably should not take too much comfort in the concept of mathematical elimination.  The playoffs are very nearly behind that visible horizon leaving us to the dark night of the off season.

Are the Orioles Playoff Chances Dead?

The Orioles are currently 10 games out of first place in the American League East with 11 games remaining.  The Red Sox basically have the division wrapped up, as their magic number to clinch the division sits at 3.  However, as of this writing, the Orioles find themselves in a dogfight for one of the two wild card spots, along with five other teams.  The current wild card standings look like this, with each teams chances of making the playoffs (as determined by ESPN) in the column to the far right. 

While Baltimore is now only 1 game behind the Rangers for the second wild card spot, the 17.2% chance of them making the playoffs isn’t too encouraging.  The large number of teams chasing down these remaining playoff spots contributes to the low chances of the Royals, Yankees, and Orioles to make the playoffs, and ESPN Insider Dan Szymborski recently wrote two articles outlining each teams chances (here and here, Insider access required and recommended), in addition to the difficulty of making the playoffs with several teams in front of you, despite only being a couple of games out.*  

*On a side note, after writing about the Orioles all season, and referencing Szymborski’s projections several times, I am now proud to say that I can finally spell his name correctly without having to check and make sure I was right.

In the story that specifically looks at the Royals playoff chances as of September 9, despite being 3.5 games back, jumping 4 teams with less than a month remaining is a tall order, and Szymborski gave the odds of that happening at just 3.7%.  Luckily, as it currently stands, Baltimore only has to jump in front of two teams, although that still remains a difficult task with only 11 games remaining.

Another factor in the playoff percentages above is the remaining schedule for each of the contenders.  You have probably heard by now that the Orioles have one of the hardest remaining schedules of the contenders, while Cleveland has the easiest, and this is by all accounts true.  After last night’s games, the Indians finish the season against the Astros, White Sox, and Twins, who are collectively 103 games below .500.  On the other hand, the Orioles finish up with Boston, Tampa Bay, and Toronto.  While Cleveland’s remaining schedule is noticeably easier than Baltimore’s, the Orioles have an advantage that the Indians do not.  Four of their remaining games are against the Rays, one of the 3 teams directly in front of them, giving them an opportunity to gain considerable ground in the race, provided a favorable outcome.  Additionally, Baltimore’s final 3 games are against a Red Sox team who may have home field advantage locked up by that point, allowing them to rest some of their starters prior to the playoffs. 

Admittedly, the title of this article portrays a negative stance on the Orioles chances of making the playoffs this year.  And while the playoff odds aren’t currently in their favor, I believe they’re in a great position to grab one of the wild card spots. With a little bit of help and a strong performance against Tampa Bay, I believe there is a good chance that we could see playoff baseball in Baltimore for the second straight year.  So to answer the question posed in the title, the Orioles playoff chances are not dead…they’re far from it.