Challenge #2: Prove that a Low BABIP = Inducing Weak Contact

Yesterday, I issued my first challenge. Sparked by Brandon McCarthy’s bizarre outing on Monday, I asked you to prove that his HR/FB rate was not bad luck. The challenge led to some great discussion, which is exactly what I had hoped it would do.

Now it’s time to move on to the second, and likely final, challenge. It’s a topic that I am more interested in and has been debated ad nauseam. Of course, I’m talking about pitcher BABIP. We have been taught that pitchers will tend to regress toward the league average, which has sat around .295 in recent years, as hitters actually possess the majority of control over how often balls in play falls for hits. So early on, we eventually came to accept this.

But similar to grasping at straws trying to explain a suppressed/inflated HR/FB rate, it has become fashionable to claim that a pitcher with a low BABIP attains such a mark because he induces weak contact, even when the analyst is fully aware of DIPS theory and agrees with it for the most part.

A low BABIP by itself cannot be evidence of the ability to induce weak contact.

There are two major problems with the assertion that a low BABIP means weak contact:

1) Weak contact isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Between bloopers, dribblers and good placement between fielders, there are ways to get hits without striking the ball hard. But of course, all else being equal, a pitcher would prefer a weakly hit ball to a hard hit ball.

2) A low BABIP could be posted for a myriad of reasons — a) balls could be hit right at fielders, making them easy to field, regardless of how hard the ball was hit, b) the defense could play its best due to pure randomness when the pitcher in question happens to be on the mound and c) yes, the pitcher could be inducing weak contact that makes it easier to convert those balls in play into outs.

The problem? We don’t know what combination of the above factors, or any others, is the true driving force behind the low BABIP. It could be just one, a combo of two, or some sort of mix of the three. We don’t know which factors are involved, nor how much credit each should receive.

But we do know some things. Like that the distribution of batted balls that a pitcher allows strongly influences his BABIP. The hierarchy of batted ball types in terms of limiting BABIP is thus:

IFFB > FB > GB > LD

So theoretically, a pitcher with an average defense behind him and a league average batted ball profile should produce a league average BABIP of around .295. And of course any deviations from the average should produce corresponding differences in expected BABIP. That’s really the only thing we know though. Trying to break down BABIP by pitch type is problematic because a pitch isn’t thrown in a vacuum, as it’s part of a series of pitches that all affect the end result of that pitch.

Intuitively, it might seem as if a pitcher who generates lots of swings outside the zone (O-Swing%), or allows lots of contact outside the zone (O-Contact%), which may very well be worse contact than balls struck inside the zone, would post a lower BABIP. Then even combining the two by multiplying them together — lots of outside the zone swings, and also lots of contact — would yield a meaningful correlation. But this is not the case. A quick trio of correlation calculations analyzing a population of 844 starting pitchers from 2005 to 2014 resulted in near-zero marks for all three metrics.

Some explanations offered for inducing weak contact include:

1) The quality of a pitcher’s stuff is so good that it induces weak contact. Batters simply have a difficult time squaring up the ball, because the pitcher is just so darn nasty. Yet, no evidence, statistics, data, proof is ever presented. It’s stated as fact, when instead it’s mere conjecture.

2) The pitcher excels at changing speeds which keeps hitters off balance and leads to weak contact. It sounds all well and good, but I have yet to encounter any actual research of this phenomena existing, with specific players examined.

Speaking of specific players, let’s pick one to dive into, because it’s easier to continue a discussion that way. From 2011 to 2014, Kyle Lohse has recorded a .269 BABIP (it was much higher prior to 2011), ninth lowest among 151 qualified starting pitchers during that time span. Lohse certainly isn’t a pitcher that springs to mind when you think of quality stuff. So that almost immediately eliminates the first possible explanation.

He has been a fastball (sinker)-slider-changeup guy throughout his career, but started mixing in his curve ball more often during the latter two years of the time period. Including the curve, his pitches ranged from the low 70s to around 90. He also threw his fastball only around 50% of the time, which is pretty low. His repertoire and frequency seem to at least make explanation two a possibility worth exploring.

His batted ball profile has been nearly a mirror image of the league average, with some minor differences. He has actually allowed a higher rate of line drives and a marginally lower rate of infield fly balls, but fewer grounders and slightly more flies. Overall, the distribution alone should lead to a BABIP around the league average. But it hasn’t.

And it surely wasn’t his defense either that should get any credit unless they happened to play significantly better behind him than for every other pitcher. From 2011 to 2012, the Cardinals ranked 26th in baseball in UZR. And from 2013 to 2014, the Brewers were almost exactly average, ranking 16th.

So I am issuing a second challenge:

Prove that Kyle Lohse’s BABIP is Due to Inducing Weak Contact or
Prove that a Low BABIP and Inducing Weak Contact Are The Same