Cliff Lee BABIP 5 versus 3

by jemagee on Sep 13, 2009 4:57 PM EDT Comment 10 comments

I'm not sure if this is an oddity or just him pitching badly, I have not seen many of Cliff Lee's outings. And I'm not 100% sure I calculated this right (Errors were counted as 'outs' instead of hits - on balls in play...if that's incorrect I can correct it)

I did a little looking at Cliff Lee's numbers from first five to past three, his pitch 'distribution' is about the same, his pitch velocities don't seem terribly different...I still don't know what all the variables ON a pitch mean so i'm hoping to figure that out this coming week after getting my one month subscription to BP to read one freaking article :).

If I collected this correctly these are the BABIP (with codecil regarding errors above) For Cliff Lee's first 8 starts as a Phillie.

.174
.316
.286
.105
.286

When you combined all the In Play balls in his first 5 starts - it works out to a BABIP .233

Lee's past 3 starts where people seem to worrying more because the outcomes of his starts have been a lot worse:

.500
.600
.357

Those 3 starts the BABIP works out to be .460

For all 8 starts, his BABIP works out to be .319

In Cleveland this year his BABIP was .326, last year it was .304

So I'm thinking he's not as bad as the past 3 starts nor is he really as dominant as he was in the first 5, but he's somewhere in the middle?

Critiques to this welcome as it's my first attempt at doing anything even remotely statistical...I suppose I could look at 'first pitch/count distribution' - was he ahead more or behind more or whatever, but I don't know if that is something that is ever useful...but i've seen this calculated.

Again, apologies if i did the calculation wrong...i may have treated the errors wrong as a site called firstinning.com has Lee's Philadephia BABIP at .316

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I’ve tried to mess with BABIP before, but one thing I’ve not understood is that homers don’t get included either. Am I on base with that or not?

Think you take is on target though….there’s no way he was as good as he was those first 5 games, and even in the bad ones recently….I didn’t see the Atlanta game. In Houston he just got dinked and dunked before a fluke hit by the opposing pitcher buried him. If there was a way to check opponents LD% I think that’d be a better indicator, but then again, it’s only 8 starts.

by Bilzo on Sep 13, 2009 11:20 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I included home runs – they count for batting average don’t they?

I don’t know that i can do line drive percentage on the numbers I have – i think that’s a different system.

Don't frack with me or you'll get a punch in the kidneys...you've been warned

by jemagee on Sep 14, 2009 10:03 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Home runs are not “in play” and are thus not counted in BABIP.

by yosoysean on Sep 14, 2009 10:29 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Now that I think about it that makes sense – they are sort of ‘pitching’ dependent without any fielding impact :)

That’s probably where my discrepancies came from – the home runs…I can revise and maintain this number going forward maybe if anyone cares

Don't frack with me or you'll get a punch in the kidneys...you've been warned

by jemagee on Sep 14, 2009 10:38 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

that’s why i mentioned it. I was curious if you’d applied them correctly.

by Bilzo on Sep 14, 2009 11:02 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, if i can find time i’ll re-do it – but even with home runs being not counted i still think the split will hold up – just slightly lower BABIP on the most recent games cause of home runs given up.

Just think he’s somewhere in the middle of the two sets – that’s all :)

Don't frack with me or you'll get a punch in the kidneys...you've been warned

by jemagee on Sep 14, 2009 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

common sense says yes, just the spread won’t be as drastic. instead of the bad starts being 200% of the good starts, it’ll probably drop to about 180% or so, which is still a ginormous spread.

by Bilzo on Sep 14, 2009 4:04 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Line Drive % can be calculated from here.

His LD% was under 20% for each of the first 5 games. In his previous 3 starts before last night, his LD% was between 31%-33%.

by Screen Name 20 on Sep 16, 2009 2:27 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Line Drive not pitcher related

The correlation between LD% one year and the next is actually 0.00. Line drives are a product of hitters’ actions. I’ve written an article before explaining that line drives came when primarily when the hitter guessed the pitch right. Any pitcher who is too predictable with his pitch selection gets beat on line drives enough that the pitching coach or catcher would intervene and select his pitches for him. So it’s not really reasonable at all to evaluate pitchers by line drive percentage. They seem to have no ability to reproduce their low line drive rates…that means it’s not a skill.

by Matt Swartz on Sep 19, 2009 12:32 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I’ve run this again – keeping out the home runs as instructed – and just for the hell of it

Game 1 – .174
Game 2 -. 333
Game 3 – .286
Game 4 – .111
Game 5 – .300
Game 6 – .412
Game 7 – .571
Game 8 – .370
Game 9 – .273

Season to Date .306 as a phillie (first inning has it slightly higher than i do, again they have 9 starts and a won loss record of 14-11 for lee), and that seems to be around his career average…so even though yahoo deemed it a ‘slump’ that he just came out of against Washington – a nicer way might be to say he was ‘regressing to career averages’?

Don't frack with me or you'll get a punch in the kidneys...you've been warned

by jemagee on Sep 16, 2009 11:51 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs