To become a great fantasy player it takes more than just looking at the back of a baseball card to see a player’s batting average or home runs totals.  To become a great fantasy player you must dig a little deeper into the secondary statistics to get a true understanding of just how a player achieved the batting average that he did or hit that many home runs.  In the 2016 Fantasy Alarm Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide Ray Flowers examines two very important secondary statistics in BABIP and Line Drive Rates and explains why they are important when projecting a player’s performance.

Here is a sample of some of the content inside the BRAND NEW 2016 Fantasy Alarm Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide that is available online RIGHT HERE. 

2016 MLB Draft Guide: Understanding BABIP and Line Drive Rates

By Ray Flowers

In another article in this Guide I discussed ground ball and fly ball ratios, including the home run, but in this piece I will break down two measures you will likely hear frequently if you read my work or listen to people talk baseball. It’s next level stuff but far from being so complicated that you need an advanced degree in analytics. I’ll tell you what the measures mean and how to understand what the data is telling you.

WHAT IS BABIP?

BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls In Play is also referred to as a player's hit rate. It is the rate at which batted balls end up as base hits. There is one caveat with BABIP – it removes home runs from the equation because technically the ball isn't in play on a home run (it never lands in the field of play). Here is the simple formula in play for the measure we call BABIP. 

(H-HR) / (AB-K-HR+SF) 

*SF = sacrifice fly

 

HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND BABIP?

1) The major league average for BABIP is traditionally in the .290-300 range. 

(2) Players tend to establish their own level of BABIP production over the years. That means if a guy has produced a .275 mark for three seasons and then he suddenly produces a .325 mark, chances are better than even that his BABIP number will regress. However, if a player produced a .325 mark year after year and then slumps to .275 in the following year it doesn't always mean he will remain at that lower mark moving forward. Whether good or bad, players tend to establish a somewhat consistent pattern over the course of multiple seasons with a rolling three season timeframe suggesting a decent baseline.

 

2015 MLB AVERAGE FOR BABIP

GB

LD

FB

Pull

Center

Opposite

.236

.678

.129

.289

.313

.295

 

(3) A player who is performing at a rate that is below his established level can be said to be hitting in a bit of "bad" luck. That's too simplistic of course, but it's a down and dirty way to look at it. A player who is performing at a rate that is above his established level can be said to be hitting in "good" luck. This is also far too simplistic. That being said, here are some notes as it pertains to the 2015 performance of some of the leading hitters in baseball that can help you place some context around their BABIP efforts.

As a general rule, any performance over .350 has to be looked at with a huge degree of skepticism as the number is extremely tough to consistently reach. Over the last three seasons combined, 2013-15, there have only been 12 men in baseball with a .350 BABIP.

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