Cleveland Indians Sabermetrics 101: BABIP

Inspired by this post at Beyond the Boxscore , here's my first "homework assignment" for Saber-Friendly Blogging 101. Batting Average on Balls In Play, BABIP, is essentially batting average for everything except strikeouts and walks. I'll let the article above, Wikipedia , and the Sabermetric Wiki give you the details. BABIP for hitters relies on many factors and will vary from player to player. But for pitchers, BABIP always seems to fall in the .290 to .310 range. What does this mean? If a pitcher is widely outside of that range one year, you can expect them to regress back to those numbers the following year, and their overall performance should follow. (I'm sure there are cases of certain pitchers having consistently high or low BABIP numbers, but I don't know of any offhand.) So, how did Indians pitchers fare in 2008? To find out, you can check The Hardball Times or Fangraphs . Or, if you'd rather do the work yourself (or, like me, didn't find out about the THT and Fangraphs ... (link)