madvillian

It's a real pain in the ass to get this in a database usable format. I setup a quick entry form and it still takes about 2-3 minutes per player of dedicated entry using Fangraphs. I did probably the 4 players of most interest to most Cubs Fans: Fukodome, Soto, Soriano and Lee. (Ramirez just not enough PA this year.) Fukodome's expected is .334 and his actual is .319. Lee's expected is .304 and his actual is .322 Sori's expected is .313 and his actual is .283 Soto's expected is .316 and his actual is .253 Soto has just not had any luck. I'm not sure what his arb status is, but ironically, his "off" year this year might perhaps help the Cubs long term. Again, I calcuated these values using "quick expected BABIP" w/ the park adustment's from the Hard Ball Times. Although not as good as xBABIP it is still very good as a predictive model and relies on stats available to the everyday Internet savy fan. If you want more info please see the Hard Ball Times articles on xBABIP. If you want more info on any of the database work I've done PM me and I can send you over the basic structure. I'll do the rest of the top batters for the Cubs soon. If it's any consolation (and it often is) the "Savior", Gordon Beckham's qxBABIP is .296 and his actual is .334. The hype machine in him is no doubt based in reality, but it might nonetheless be a bit premature.

So, I have the formula into my database, just trying to do some data entry on the players and teams I'm interested in looking at. Unfortunately there isn't a good database format spreadsheet or text file to import for the qxBABIP formula. I did run one player quickly though: in one of my favorite baseball convergences, intuition is backed by statistical analyis: qxBABIP has Fukodome at .334 -- 15 points higher than his .319. He's been unlucky. Dude hits a ton of line drives. I'll try and get you guys most frequent batter totals from 2009 here in an hour or so.

Rob: Actually your work (well intentioned if flawed) has inspired me to do some of my own. I'm currently working on calculating the expected BABIP for a few teams (including the Cubs) with some database functions using the "quick expected BABIP" developed by the Hard ball times. Not quite as good as xBABIP but still very good. It's proving a little frustrating as I'm trying to reverse engineer a spreadsheet calculator they put together and move it into a database where I can quickly calculate it for entire teams at a time. We'll see how motivated I am over the next few hours, but hopefully I'll have the Cubs by the end of the night.

I really don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, as this might be like my 5th post here and I'm not a Cubs fan... But -- using LD% + .120 predictively was found to be worse than using actual BABIP by the Hard Ball Times earlier this year. If you believe their research (and with their rep and my rudimentary statistical knowledge, I am) then the premise of this thread is invalid. Thus, there are no conclusions to be drawn from calcuating expected BABIP using this method, and we should expect future BABIP for these players to closer to their actual BABIP rather than the calculated value of LD% + .120. This thread of course could be done over using their best model -- xBABIP. Here is the article: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/whats-the-best-babip-estimator/ [edited for clarity]

Have fun guys, my uncle took me to Cubs/Yanks back in 2006 for my college graduation present. We had great seats down the 1st base line about 12 rows up from the field. Very much enjoyed the bleacher creature "around the horn" intros. If I remember correctly A-Rod hit a grand slam to break that game open for a Yanks blowout. After school I decided to move to NYC. I got to 3 yanks games and 2 mets games last year. Hopefully I can do at least 1 each this time around. With the new stadiums I might be priced out. anyways, enjoy. Be sure to take the train to the game, their is no other way to experience gameday IMO.