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Sabermetrics is a series of statistics and analysis that attempts to look at a fantasy baseball player's performance in an objective and therefore accurate manner. The key advantage that Sabermetrics provide over traditional baseball stats is that to a greater extent they isolates an individual player's performance. A starting pitcher's ability to earn a win is highly dependent on the performance of the offense, defense and bullpen and therefore not an accurate measure of the pitchers skills. Here are six basic Sabermetrics that can help isolate flukes from valid trends when you evaluate fantasy baseball players for the 2010 season.
Pitching Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is the batting average against a pitcher, removing at-bats that go for HRs or strikeouts. The normal BABIP or Hit Rate is 30%, meaning for every 10 balls that have a chance to get fielded, three will find a hole and count as a hit. Unlucky pitchers with have a BABIP above 30% likely resulting in a high ERA and WHIP. Since their BABIP should regress back toward the mean of 30% these pitchers are typically undervalued and good buy low candidates to add to your team. Cole Hamels, Derek Lowe and Ricky Nolasco are all starting pitchers that had high Hit Rates last season. Home Runs to Fly Ball Rate (HR/FB ) is normally 10% for starting pitchers. Much like Hit Rate, pitchers can be unlucky on a year-to-year basis with an inflated HR/FB%. Pitchers with a high HR/FB% last season should regress back toward 10% in 2010 aiding them in improving their ERA, WHIP and win totals. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Luke Hochevar, and Josh Beckett may be undervalued heading into 2010 due to higher than normal HR/FB% last season. K/BB measures a pitcher's strikeout to walk ratio. The best pitches have a 3-1 ratio expressed as 3.0. 2.0 is generally the minimum required for a pitcher to be consistently effective enough to be viable in fantasy baseball. In other words, pitchers that can't strikeout twice as many batters as they walk have control problems and present significant risk. The key is to identify pitchers with solid ratios but might otherwise get overlooked. In the second half of last season Barry Zito held a rate of 2.1, Ervin Santana posted a 2.5, and David Price rose his to 2.2. All three are worth considering in 2010 based on the speculation that they can sustain those ratios for an entire year. Hitting Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is one of a handful of Sabermetric stats that works for both hitters and pitchers. We want to identify batters that underperformed last year that we can attribute to bad luck. Hank Blalock, Alexi Casilla, Jimmy Rollins and Edwin Encarnacion all have a chance to bounce back in 2010 if they find a few more holes and fall into some average luck. But, unlike pitchers, each batter will have his own standard BABIP that may be higher or lower than 30%. This is typically due to speed, line drive hitting ability or the number of fly balls they hit. Contact Rate (ct%) is a measure of a batters strikeout rate. 90% or better is achieved by the league's best hitters while 75% and lower represents players to stay away from. Vernon Wells (86%), Grady Sizemore (79%), and Aubrey Huff (84%) are three players that had down years last year despite ct% among the best of their careers. They each have a good chance to bounce back in 2010. Ground Ball, Fly Ball and Line Drive Rate (G/F/L) is the percentage of balls in play that are hit on the ground, in the air or as a line drive. Batters with increased line drive % are likely to sustain higher batting averages while increases in fly ball % can foretell an increase in home runs. Joey Votto's fly ball % increased from 33% in the first half of last year to 42% in the second half which suggests 30 HRs may be on tap for 2010. Nick Markakis had a career high 41% fly ball rate last year which gives him a chance to push 30 HRs this season. Don't overpay for Alex Gordon on draft day hoping for a breakout. His line drive rate plummeted to 14% last year meaning a .250 or so batting average may be the best case scenario for now. In the next installment of Fantasy Baseball for Beginners we will cover ten sleepers that could help you win your league. Do you want to master fantasy baseball? Sign Up for the Fantasy Pros 911 Premium Site for in depth fantasy baseball advice. Trackback(0)
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Tags: Cole Hamels Derek Lowe Ricky Nolasco Daisuke Matsuzaka Luke Hochevar Josh Beckett Barry Zito Ervin Santana David Price Hank Blalock Alexi Casilla Jimmy Rollins Edwin Encarnacion Vernon Wells Grady Sizemore Aubrey Huff Joey Votto Nick Markakis Alex Gordon sleepers sabermetrics fantasy baseball
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