MLB: Brian Bannister offers insight, advice to fans

Ok...who’s the wiseass that sent saberequests in to Bannister?

Can pitchers have a noticeable impact on their BABIP (batting average on balls in play)?

For those with an interest in statistics, a pitcher’s BABIP, or the percentage of balls in play (not including home runs) that result in hits, are largely out of a pitcher’s control when averaged over the course of several years. A favorable batted-ball mix (the ratio of line drives/fly balls/ground balls/popups) can help lower a pitcher’s BABIP over the course of a season, but in general, it will migrate towards .300 over time. As pitchers, we can only control our strikeouts, walks, home runs allowed and groundball/flyball ratios (the latter based on adjusting our pitches and arm angles).

A good way to get a rough idea of what a pitcher is doing to improve his long-term sustainable ERA, independent of luck, is to look up his FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, on a site such as www.fangraphs.com. For example, Paul Splittorff’s career FIP was 3.72, and his career ERA ended up at 3.81, while Bret Saberhagen’s career FIP was 3.26, and his career ERA ended up at 3.34.

...The reason that a pitcher’s ERA does not always match his FIP is that the timing of his hits can vary from year to year. The luck of those hits/homers are much more detrimental with runners on base, which is recorded as percentage of runners left on base, or LOB%. A common LOB% percentage is in the 70-80% range, with anything above that range representing good luck and below that bad luck.

Therefore, you can now see how your favorite pitchers, such as Zack Greinke, are improving from year-to-year. Zack is currently posting a career-best 3.56 FIP, and has the 2.88 ERA to match because of some great pitching with runners on base and an increased ground-ball rate, which has resulted in less home runs allowed.