In this episode, Dan discusses BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and the importance of understanding what BABIP is especially for pitchers. Dan also talks about bunting and if the run expectancy matrix (discussed in the previous episode) influences whether a coach gives the bunt sign.

Links: Run Expectancy and Bunting article mentioned in the episode; Fangraphs article on BABIP mentioned in the episode; also, Try Early Work Strength Program for free here.

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You’re listening to the Dear Baseball Gods podcast. In this show, I helped parents, players and coaches better navigate their baseball careers.

All right. Welcome back to Dear Baseball Gods. On today’s episode, we’re going to cover. Two main topics. Both are a little on the nerdier side. First one is going to be batting average for balls in play. And this is a statistic that you may not have heard of, but it’s important to understand, especially as a pitcher.

And secondly, we’re gonna talk about bunting and we’re going to talk about whether bunting makes sense, and we’re going to talk about run expectancy and the run expectancy matrix, and how. That should influence or can influence, or maybe you should not influence a coach’s decision to give the bunt sign.

So before we get going, just a reminder in the show notes of this podcast, you’ll find links to my books. You’ll find links to my online courses and you’ll find links to my online strength conditioning program for baseball players. So if you’re interested in upping your game, finding a new resource for your son or for your players on your team, And definitely check out the show notes below where you’ll find again, all my resources and links to my YouTube channel, my social media handles all that other stuff.

So if you’re new here, thanks for listening. And definitely check out the show notes because I have this big sort of network of content, and I hope that you can find the right thing that helps you in your baseball journey.

All right. So first thing here BABIP. That’s how you’ll see this annotated in a stat sheets, whatever, but BABIP is batting average for balls in play. And this is a stat that measures all batted balls, except for home runs. It does not count strike outs either, cause it’s not a ball in play. And so.

Why BABIP is interesting is because it gives you a measure of how well hitters do when they put the ball in play. So it gives you a number just like batting average. So it’d be .350 or .362 or .224 or .488. And here’s, what’s really interesting though. Pitchers don’t have a good way of controlling their batting average for balls in play.

And what this means is so take someone like Greg Maddix. So the major league average for BABIP is about 300. And plus, or minus Greg Maddix hall of Famer. One of my favorite baseball players when I was growing up, his BA BIP for a hall of fame career is also right around 300. You think that it would be way less, right?

Because he’s better than other players, but it’s not. So there’s a lot of other factors that go into why he was good, obviously. BABIP does not take into account strikeouts and home runs and all that stuff. So basically when you’re getting a batting average for a hitter, that’s not taking only balls put in play.

It also accounts home runs and accounts strikeout. So if you strike out a ton of people, a hitters are putting less balls in play, right? So even though the ones that are put in play or 300 hitters might be hitting 200 off you. And that’s because you’re punching out so many guys when they never put the ball in play.

But here’s, what’s interesting about again, about. What about BABIP? Is that again, all the sort of statisticians and the people who are really in the know, like if you go to fangraphs.com, which is a great website to get to know metrics or baseball prospectus, hardball times, which is owned by FanGraphs.

All of them will sort of tell you, like, look even the best pitchers still are sort of like, they gravitate toward the mean here with batting average balls in play, because hitters can not control where the ball goes after it leaves the bat. And so what BABIP really tells you is when you’re running really lucky or really unlucky, and this is assuming that you belong at that level.

And so let me explain it. So. If you are an actually like a major league caliber pitcher and you’re pitching in the major leagues. And so it was like your third season, you held your own, right? You had an average era, your first two seasons, whatever, but you’re clearly a major league caliber pitcher. You start out the season and you’re just dominating.

And you’re batting average with balls in play is two 20. Wow. When guys put the ball in play, they’re only hitting two 20 against you. Obviously then you add in strikeouts and they’re probably hitting like one 60 against you. What all these statisticians say is that is fluky. That is exceptionally good luck for the pitcher and he will eventually normalize and it might not take until the very end of the season, or it might not take that season at all.

Like you might have a fluky BABIP where you go a whole season where it’s 270. But it’s going to come back to the norm because you just can’t control that it was exceptionally good luck and so way. And of course this works the opposite way. So you could have a really rough first month. You’re like, Oh man, why is Clayton Kershaw I’ll have such a poor April?

Or why does Max Scherzer off to such a slow start? Well, his batting average for balls and play could be like 370 and you’re like, well, That’s because when they put the ball in play, they’re hitting three 70 and that’s way too high for a major league pitcher. So it’s really just, he’s had a lot of fluky, bad luck.

And instead of that ground ball being gobbled up by the shortstop and he gets an out, it just finds a hole where that blooper finds a hole or that line drive finds a hole there’s more balls or finding a hole, than normal. And so really the way you start to assess, how well you pitch is, if you assume every pitcher had a 300 batting average, her balls in play, everyone was exactly the same.

Then what would differentiate pitchers would be how weak of contact they get. So. Are they giving up lots of doubles or are they giving up lots of singles when they do give up hits? Cause you’re going to give up hits and then did they strike hitters out? You know, if you’re striking out nine hitters, a game versus four hitters, a game, you know, hitters have a lot more chances to put the ball in play and then they’ll get more hits because if, if three out of every 10 balls put in play or a hit.

If you have an extra five balls put in play per game, that’s an extra 1.5 hits per game. So those are all really important factors. So there’s a lot more beyond just, putting the ball in play. It’s knowing again, like how hard are they hit the ball consistently? So that’s an important metric, average exit speed, stuff like that, but all sorts of comes back and ties into batting average for balls in play.

So. This, especially in short season, short sample sizes. And I started catching on to this stat back in, I think, 2015 or 16, and really paying attention to it. Where I knew that I got some good luck. Like for example, I was exceptionally good with, the bases loaded. And with runners in scoring position in general, my rookie season.

So good. In fact that it was probably just mostly a fluke. You can’t prevent singles. Only one year, the bases are loaded. It’s not like, Oh, you bear down, you focus up. Sure. That those are real things. But at the end of the day, you really can’t control what happens after they put the ball in play. So the fact that hitters were hitting like one 50 off me with the bases loaded in my rookie season.

Of course that was 2010. You know, that was really just more good luck for me. And if I got an extra 20 starts that season, then of course I got 20 stars. So I got an extra, if I got an extra 20 you’d have definitely expected with a larger sample size of bases, loaded situations. That I was just going to start to like normalize and that some of that amazing luck that I had, like every time they hit the ball, hard with the bases, loaded a hit and finds a fielder, that’s gonna start to run out because again, just the law of averages are going to, things are just going to average out.

So the same thing with batting average of balls in play. I remember I had a teammate who was having an amazing season after I retired and I was looking him up and I’m like, man, he’s dominating. He still got like a 0.8 era. You know, past the all-star break. And I look up his batting average for balls and play, and it’s like  170 and I’m like, okay, he’s a good pitcher.

I mean, he just, he is a good pitcher, but he’s getting exceptionally good luck right now. And that’s going to run out at some point. It might not run out this whole season because he’s a reliever and he’s only gonna throw 40 innings, 50 innings, but there’s definitely a luck component that’s helping his amazing season.

So it’s important to know that not to rain on other people’s parades. But just for yourself to say, if you looked at your own stats and I did this number of times, it was like, okay, well, number one, my batting average at balls in plays a very high and I do belong at this league. And this was my other point that I need to come back to, which is if you take a 15 year old, a 15 year old boy and put them in the major leagues, he’s not going to have a major league average batting average for balls in play.

Right guys, there’s going to be hitting missiles all over the field. And his is going to be much higher than 300. Probably like 500 and it wouldn’t be fair to say that that was bad luck. That was just, he doesn’t belong with that league. So you also have to consider, and this is where, when you read a lot of these articles about these sabermetrics stats, they’re not talking about, you know, high schoolers.

They’re not talking about youth baseball. They’re not talking about amateur baseball at all. They’re talking about major league baseball and how all these stats work. And so they’re, they, they’re not even considering the fact that there could be someone who’s just absolutely terrible who gets promoted, even if you’re, you know, a triple a player and you go to the big leagues or double a player, get promoted, the big leagues and you get hit around a little bit.

You still are like almost a majorly caliber player. Maybe you just. Can’t quite stick there and you never really stay. And so your batting average for balls and play would probably be a little higher than, than an average established major leaguer, but you still are pretty close. Right. But again, if you took like, and this is where it gets tougher for amateur baseball to apply this because you could have on one 14 new team, A bunch of pitchers who are very good and at least average for their age.

And you can have a couple kids like your bottom of your pitching rotation, who just aren’t very good. And so they might have a batting average of balls in play that’s way above normal or average for 14 new baseball. But that’s because they’re really just not good enough. And it’s not a fluke. It’s just the fact that.

They’re just getting ripped because they’re just not that good for 14 U baseball. Whereas again, there’s variations in skill level. Don’t exist as much in the major leagues. Sure. Again, a couple of guys get lit up when they come up to the big leagues, but pretty much everyone who’s a regular up there is pretty, pretty close.

Like they’re pretty good. Like sure. Some guys have five point 70 RAs, but it’s never like embarrassing. Right? So. Again, my point here is at the major league level, everyone sort of normalizes to that like 300 mark. That’s the major league average for a batting average for balls in play. But that’s also because they’re all super skilled, major leaguers and the deviations in skill level.

Aren’t that huge. But again, at amateur baseball, if you’re trying to apply this and look at the numbers, a seasons are so short and you know, you play a 30 game season and a pitcher gets, you know, 20 innings. He’s not going to get a huge sample size where you’re going to be at a look at his batting average for balls and play and make a lot of meaningful assumptions from it.

That’s another challenge, even with again, relief, pitchers are hard. One because again, looking at my own stats, looking at teammate’s stats and the example I just gave you with my, former teammate who had a great season after I retired. You know, it was just like, it’s such a small sample size where if you give that guy 400 innings instead of just 40, The role of luck is going to be a lot more diminished because the law of averages are going to come back into play.

So let’s summarize here batting average for balls in play, or BABIP is all batted balls put on, you know, put into play minus home runs. And again, this does not count strike outs. That’s how it varies from batting average. So batting average includes every outcome. This does not include batting era home runs or strikeouts.

It hovers at around 300 in the major leagues. And it’s probably a significantly higher and amateur ball because, fielding is just not nearly as good chorus. Batted ball speeds are a lot lower, but Fielding’s not nearly as good. And again, the main thing with batting after balls in play is it sort of tells you whether you’re having a fluky performance in either direction, whether you’re.

Getting a lot of good luck as a pitcher or a hitter or, a lot of bad luck. And again, I’ve been talking about this from a pitcher’s perspective, but it also equally applies to hitters. They have a batting average of balls in play. Now, if you hit the ball a lot harder than another hitter, you’re batting average for balls and play is probably going to be higher than his.

But again, if you had a pretty normalized level of play like D-1 baseball or a pro or minor league baseball or majorly baseball, Then again, that batting average of balls in play, which is 300 in the major leagues for pitchers is also a 300 major league for hitters because obviously hitters the ones who are hitting the ball.

So that 300 number a number, even though I didn’t mention earlier applies equally to hitters and Petra and pitchers. So again, just expect that to be much more varied in amateur ball. And if you do track this stat on game changer or any of these other ones, which it does track that. Then, you know, just look through it and be interested in it.

See if you can find averages, if you’re a coach and you have a bunch of seasons of data, have you interesting to kind of look at it and see what you get, but it’s definitely not gonna be 300. It’s nothing to be higher than that. And it’s going to be probably a difficult to make meaningful generalizations, but as a pitcher or as a hitter, You can use it as a, as a tool to identify whether you’re suffering from and good luck or bad luck.

And if it’s bad luck, then you can say, okay, I just need to stay the course. It’ll get better. If it’s good luck that you’re better fitting from, then you say, okay, I need to continue to really pick pitch tough and not like pat myself on the back too much, because my luck was probably changing. And I’m probably getting a little bit lucky right now.

And, you still need to focus and try to continue to improve and make quality pitches. And, so hopefully that was a good overview. BABIP is interesting and it’s a staff that’s not going away. And it just gives you another piece of the puzzle to understand a pitcher’s performance.

All right. In the second half of the show today, let’s talk about bunting and whether bunting makes sense. And we’ll talk a little bit about run expectancy, which we covered in my last podcast episode. So if you’re, if you jumped right to this episode without catching the previous episode, definitely check that one out about run expectancy.

So. Let’s catch up real fast though, for about what run expectancy means. So run expectancy is how many runs on average. So it’s always gonna be a fraction pretty much. How many runs on average can we expect from a given base an out-state? So a base outstate is runners on first and second and one out that’s the S the state of the bases, like how many runners are on base and how many outs there are.

So bases loaded two outs as a base out state. No one on no one out. As a base out state runner on third, two outs as a base out-state so run expectancy expresses as a number. So 2.29 runs is how many is the actual run expectancy? I can’t remember. The years of is like four years of major league data that I say that from, for bases low to no one out.

So base is loaded. In with no one out teams scored on average 2.29 runs in that base. Out-state so, here’s, what’s  important. And that goes to the end of the inning. So, here’s the thing to know with bunting. So bunting has been demonized. They don’t really do it in major league baseball anymore.

And what they’ve learned and why they’ve done that is. Because they basically found out that in a lot of situations that we would commonly sac bunting it actually decreased Iran expectancy for the rest of the evening. And, you know, it’s one of these situations where you always do this, assuming that it gives you a better odds of scoring or it increases the amount of runs that you’ll score in general, but that proves to not be the case.

Let me give me the main three examples here. So if you have first and second and no one out. Then you expect to score 0.86 runs on average that’s first and second. No one out. And let me start that over. So runner on first and no out who misread my notes here, runner on first and no one out is 0.86 runs when you bump that runner to second base.

So now you have a runner on second with one out that base outstate yields, 0.66 runs. So you lose two tenths of a run. You go from 0.86 to 0.66 Bunning a runner from first to second again, that’s from majorly data. All right. And the second comment is bunting, a single runner from second to third base. And in that case, again, losing an out, you’d go from 1.10 runs down to 0.95 runs.

So you’re losing. 1.15 runs by bunting them over the third. And then the last one first and second bunting them both over to second and third decreases your unexpectancy from 1.44 to 1.38. So now how many runs is that? Right? Point two 0.1 5.06 runs doesn’t seem like a lot, but over the course of a long season, especially at the major league level.

If you do that over and over and over, you’re costing your team, you know, five, 10 runs a season, something like that. It could, it could be, that’s a lot of bunting, but the takeaway here is you never want to put yourself knowingly in a situation to score less runs as a team. Right. That makes sense. Now, the other thing to take into account here is that.

When probability is, is another factor that you need to account for. So now sure. Bunting a  runner from first to second, with no one out in the, in the second inning will just decrease your run expectancy for that ending. And it’s probably a bad move objectively. However, running a runner from first to second.

In the eighth inning, when you’re, it’s a two, two game and you know, you only need one more run and scoring one more run. Now on the eighth, it gives you extremely high chance of winning the game. Then buying your first, a sec, the runner from first to second and that situation, yes, it decreases the amount of runs you expect for that inning, but you only need one, you know that because it’s only in the game and it does increase your win probability.

So the wind probability is the other metric here. That’s going to. Say how likely is team A versus team B to win the game. So in that situation, you’d probably ignore, run expectancy and say, this is going to give us a higher wind probability. We should do it. So again, that’s one way to think about this and here’s the other thing.

So when we talk about bunting in the major leagues, it makes a lot less sense because again, with the long ball with extra base hits, You know, with the move, towards putting the ball in the air and power a guy’s going to score from first on a double, right? There’s more power hitters who we know that they’re paid to hit the ball far.

So they’re going to get more doubles and home runs. And, and so if you’re on first base with a guy like that, a two, three, four, five header, it probably makes more sense to stay put rather than Bunning in the second, when a double wastes, essentially that extra base, like you don’t want to hit doubles when there’s a guy on second base, you want to hit doubles when there’s a guy on first base.

Because that’s going to plate him and you’re going to get three bases for that two base hit. So that’s the thing to remember. They majorly game has changed a lot. There’s a lot less, there’s a lot fewer singles. And so again, if you have a guy like John Carlos Stanton up and you have a guy on first, he should probably stay put because getting to second base is a matter as much, because again, the likelihood when Stanton does connect on something that it’s, it’s got a much higher chance of being for extra bases, which will score him from first.

Anyway. So. That being said, you have to take into account number one, who’s coming up to the plate who, the hitter, who the hitters are and how you can maximize the amount of bases you get per pitch. Like you want again, you want to score guys from first on a double, rather than we know you would guarantee score from second on double.

So that’s one thing. And the other thing about the major league game is that. The outcome is relatively certain. When you sac bunt, if you sac bunt, you’re going to be out 99% of the time. Right. We know what fielding percentages and the major leagues, it’s like 98, right. Nine 80. So we know that even on ground balls, you’re out 98% of the time or whatever it is.

And so when we’re talking about bunting, it’s pretty certain that if you sac bunt, you’re giving up an out. For a base. And that, again, that trade is not a good one. A lot of the times now at youth baseball, this is where this doesn’t apply as much. We all know that in youth baseball, depending on the team and depending on the field and depending on all the runner, all this stuff, bunts, even sack bonds, the outcome is much less certain you might reach base.

If you know, if you had a kid whose average speed for 13, you baseball. For example, if you had a kid whose average speed for 13 year baseball, even though you like shows early and makes it legit sack bun, He might still beat it out one out of every six times or one out of every seven times. And I’m just making that number up, but that seems realistic.

If it, you could take a 13 year old who puts on a decent bond, a decent sac bunt against another team, a 13 year old baseball players. He probably gets the first on, at least one at a six or one at a seven. So now that completely changes the complexity or the, not the complexity, the complexion of this, this, this table, because now, You’re getting to first base and you’re not giving up that out anymore.

And of course, when we’re talking about bunting, we’re talking about sac bunting. This is really the question here. No, one’s debating really the merits of bunting for a hit bunting for a hit is a very opportunistic thing. It should be done by players who are good bunters and it should be done when the situation dictates.

So I told my players my last year as a head coach, look, if you see the third baseman playing behind the bag on his heels, Throw down a bunch of the third base side, you’re going to beat it out if it’s even a halfway decent bond. And if you’re a player who likes looking for that opportunity and you’re fast, and you’re a pretty decent boner, you can get a lot of free hits and getting to first base.

And not making it out is one of the best is, is essentially the best thing you can possibly do as a ballplayer, like outs are our outs are currency. And when you can, anytime you can reach first base, you’ve done a really big thing for your team. It doesn’t have to be a double triple or home run, just not making it out and reaching for a space is huge.

So. When we talk about the merits of bunting for a hit, they are still the same as a single or a walk. We know there’s a lot of merit for getting to first base in general. So a bunt for a hit is just another way to do that. And you only do that again when the defense is napping, when maybe the third basement is slow, has a bad arm, which you can identify that a lot at youth baseball levels, right?

There’s a. Kind of fat, slow third basement. Who’s just like knocking a handle a bump. Well, we’ve all been in situations like that. Whereas that situation does not exist in D one baseball or pro baseball. Right? So the merits of bunting are much different at the younger levels. And we have to take those into consideration as well.

So the run expectancy thing and bunting, it’s just important to understand how they all interact. What does your team look like? Does your team hit a lot of singles? Does your team really struggle to scrape runs across? Is it getting late in the game? And it’s unlikely that you’ll string three hits together, but you did get the lead off guy on, on a hit by pitch or a walk, and now you can bond them in.

And maybe we have two chances to get a single the, to put us in the lead. That’s it in that situation, that bunting probably makes sense. But in other situations where it’s like, Hey, we have a pretty strong hitting lineup and we have our lead up lead off hitter on in the fourth. We’re not going to bond him to second base to get them in scoring position.

And we’re going to let these three guys swing away because there’s a pretty good chance that we get a hit or two. And there’s also a chance within there that we get an extra base hit, which is going to score him. So those are the things to consider. And where a lot of, managers, coaches, whatever you want to call them,  in all levels of amateur baseball fall shore, is that they don’t really consider their complexity of, or the, the complexion of their whole team, the complexion of the other team, the, the hitter, all these other things.

The other thing that does matter more in youth baseball is there were some kids who were just like almost a guaranteed out. Sometimes maybe there’s an, a terrible slump and they’re like mentally defeated. Maybe there’s a pitcher on the mound throwing really hard. And they’ve just had like two terrible looking strikeouts earlier.

And there’s like, no chance. He’s going to get a hit the third time up. Those are all scenarios. We’ve all seen. Right? We just know this kid has no chance of getting a hit and that, and that situation. Any type of bond probably makes sense because it’s better than nothing. And that’s not a scenario that, that existed.

The D-1 level is not as a scenario that exists in the pro level. Like there just are no players who were guaranteed outs, but sometimes, unfortunately there are players who are pretty much assure out or maybe they’re, you know, we could estimate their chance of getting a hit in a certain situation is like, One in 20 or it’s like, all right, well, we’re probably better off just like seeing if he can put a bunt down.

And then his chances of getting to first base are probably better than one in 20. So that’s a big part of this discussion now, should you bunt, you know, for a lot of poor young players who are scrappy, if you see yourself as being a second baseman shortstop, centerfielder at the college level. You should learn how to bond and you should be good at it.

It’s an impressive,  it’s an impressive skill Scouts like to see that they like to see players who know how to play the game, who can read a defense who are fast, who have good back control and who have good in game IQ. If they see a player dropped down a bunt because the third baseman is playing really far back and get an easy free hit.

That’s a plus that’s a plus for any college scout watching, because he says, man, this kid is, is, is actively engaging with the game. He’s not just going up there trying to see how hard you can hit the ball. He’s a ballplayer and the game, especially the amateur game needs. If they need anything, they need more ballplayers.

That’s it for today’s episode of Dear Baseball Gods. I’d greatly appreciate it. If you’d subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts, don’t forget in the notes of this show. You’ll find links to my pitching manual pitching isn’t complicated. My memoir, Dear Baseball Gods.

My online video pitching courses and my new baseball strength training program called Early Work. You can sign up right now for a free 14 day trial to Early Work. And if you’re interested in one of my online courses, you can save 20% on any one of them and the promo code baseball gods. Thanks again for listening and stay on your hustle.

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