Sports: A Game Of Inches

We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."

Digging Into The Numbers

Tristan Crockcroft of ESPN.com just wrote a very interesting fantasy analysis that breaks down BABIP and peripheral stats by hit type. According to five year data from 2004-2008:

The league average BABIP on groundballs was .239
The league average BABIP on flyballs was .138
The league average HR/FB percentage was 9.2%
The league average BABIP on line drives was .725

Cool stuff, bro.

4 comments:

The 'Bright' One said...: explain something to me. how can cruz, quintin, phillips, and ordonez have a zero batting average on fly balls, but have a non-zero HR/FB rate? Dont home tuns help your batting average, hence it should be above zero; May 6, 2009 at 10:44 AM
David "MVP" Eckstein said...: Home runs are NOT balls in plays. this analyzes BABIP; May 6, 2009 at 12:00 PM
The 'Bright' One said...: Ok, then hr/fb is that total hr divided by total fb or only fb that do not result in hr?; May 6, 2009 at 12:34 PM
David "MVP" Eckstein said...: HR/FB=HR/total number of fly balls (including HR); May 6, 2009 at 12:39 PM