BABIP stands for batting average on balls in play. It simply means the % of balls put into play that are hits, it takes strike outs and home runs out of the equation. The equation is as follows:
I stole that graphic from wikipedia, but it had the best image of that I could find. You take out the home runs from both sides, because home runs are not technically in play, and strike outs don't put the ball in play. Sacrifice flies are added back in because they are put into play, they just happen to be beneficial to the offensive team.
BABIP can be used for many different things. It is one of the only stats that gets used for bother hitters and pitchers. It can be used to show how good the defense is. What I have seen it used most common for is how lucky/unlucky a hitter or pitcher is. If a hitter is having a consistently low BABIP he is most likely having some sort of issue at the plate. If you look at the player with the lowest BABIP of all the qualifying hitters in baseball, Dan Uggla, I think there is something more wrong than just bad luck. From what I have read and heard he is not getting his front foot down fast enough, but it would probably indicate that something is out of whack with him batting approach.
Judging BABIP is largely subjective. Different players tend to have different levels for BABIP, it does not mean that they are better than others if their BABIP is higher. Faster players tend to have a higher BABIP than slower players, because they are able to beat out more infield hits than slower players would. Austin Jackson lead the league in BABIP last year. That is helped because he strikes out a lot, which means he puts the ball in play less, and he is a fast runner. Ichiro regularly has one of the highest BABIP's in the league, because he gets lots of infield hits as well as being a generally good slap hitter.
Pitchers who strike out a lot of batters can also have higher BABIP's than other types of pitchers, but ground ball pitchers can also get crushed in this statistic, if he plays with a defense that is only decent and not elite. I would venture to guess that groundball pitchers have higher BABIP's than flyball pitchers. That would be my guess.
The stat can be used to show how lucky a player is. Players tend to consistently hover around the same number for BABIP from season to season. If a hitter has an irregularly high BABIP, when compared to his career average, it means that he is most likely due to regress back to the norm. The same thing can be said for a player that is suffering through an unusually low BABIP, unless that player is suffering through an injury, or some other sort of problem like Dan Uggla, mentioned above. One indication earlier in the year that Joe Mauer was hurt, was the fact that he has an unusually low BABIP compared to his averages, of course this was in a small sample size too.
BABIP for pitchers works in in an inversed way. If the pitcher has an extremely low BABIP it means that he is most likely going to be due for some regression. If he has a really high BABIP then that will likely return to the norm as well.
My favorite source for BABIP numbers is fangraphs.com, I usually use baseballreference.com for just about all of my statistics, but this is the one that I use fangraphs for.
Well I just wanted to do a little bit of sports writing tonight. I hope this has been enjoyable, as well as educational.
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