r/phillies • u/Baseball-Reference • Sep 03 '25
Statistics Fun fact: Brandon Marsh's career BABIP is .370, which is the highest in MLB since at least 1954
https://stathead.com/tiny/n1yZE/redditQualifier: minimum 2,000 plate appearances.
Context: Batting average on balls in play (BABIP) incorporates sacrifice flies, which has existed in present form since 1954.
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u/Strange-Cold-5192 Sep 03 '25
Solidly in 2nd place all-time behind Cobb. One of my favorite obscure baseball facts
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u/WaterlooMall Matt Strahm Sep 03 '25
The ghost of Ty Cobb visits him every night to mock him about this.
"You'll never catch up to The Cobb, longhair!"
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u/BamaPhils Rhys Hoskins Sep 03 '25
Without looking at BB Savant, this seems like it’s at least partially a product of him being a line drive hitter. Seems like a lot of the time he just hits lasers
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u/jagne004 Sep 03 '25
His savant page basically says when he makes contact he usually hits the ball hard relative to his peers. He just doesn’t make contact often enough. Still a fine player but the background stats says he could be really good to elite if he could find a way to make more contact.
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25
The infamous “luck” stat
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u/fasteddeh Phillie Phanatic Sep 03 '25
Honestly the luck part is kind of overblown without context. It's been correlated that players who have higher average exit velos and/or have a faster sprint speed tend to have higher BABIP over their career. Also players who have a higher rate of good contact and a certain launch angle tend to have better BABIP as well.
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u/jagne004 Sep 03 '25
Marsh has comfortably sat 70th-80th percentile every year in exit velocity, hard hit pct, sweet spot pct, and barrel pct. Basically when he makes contact he hits the ball hard pretty often and he has a high chance of getting hit. He just doesn’t make quite enough contact to maximize it constantly.
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25
Yeah I really don’t think it has anything to do with luck at all.
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u/Immediate-Instance14 Sep 03 '25
Iirc thats two different things. BABIP itself is a skill as the guy above mentioned, exit velocity and stuff. If a players BABIP in a specific year is unusually high or low compared to the players career average thats an indication of them being lucky/unlucky if that makes sense.
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25
It’s a player’s batting average if you remove strikeouts and walks. It’s definitely not a skill. A lot of people attribute BABIP to luck, but that’s a gross oversimplification. There are a lot of factors that can lead to a higher than average BABIP.
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u/Lord_Of_Shade57 Sep 03 '25
It's a good way of "measuring luck"
If a dude with a career .320 BABIP has a stretch where that number jumps to .370, and there is no corresponding increase in quality of contact, it's usually safe to say he's getting lucky and will probably regress. If his BABIP jumps because his EV and line drive rate have increased, then it's probably not dumb luck and is more likely the result of a meaningful change in the way he hits the ball
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25
If you think luck is the only other contributing factor then I don’t know what to tell you.
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u/Lord_Of_Shade57 Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25
I literally said if his BABIP increases and there is a corresponding change in quality of contact that explains it, then it probably isn't luck but I mean it's fine if you don't want to read what I wrote
EDIT the reason we talk about luck is because BABIP can be an indicator dumb luck. Rojas was a good example as mentioned above, he had a .410 BABIP in his MLB stint in 2023 that could in no way be explained by any of his contact metrics, so most people concluded he was getting very lucky. We have seen his subsequent seasons and it is pretty clear that he was getting lucky. BABIP on its own isn't a very useful stat though, it really only becomes useful when paired with other metrics
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25
I think calling it “luck” is just an inability or refusal to apply further context beyond the typical metrics. Launch angle, defensive alignment, pulling the ball or hitting the other way more often, etc are also contributing factors. There are too many variables to just call it “luck” but I agree that it’s not a particularly useful stat by itself.
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u/Lord_Of_Shade57 Sep 04 '25
Yes, those are all things that influence BABIP that have nothing to do with luck, I agree. There are times however when changes in BABIP occur and nothing under the hood has changed, in which case it's often just a guy having good or bad luck. These are situations where we will often look for that guy to regress to the mean.
I also feel compelled to mention that K rate is a relevant thing to look at here as well, even though it is specifically isolated from BABIP. Especially in today's game, a guy's BABIP in isolation might give you the wrong impression of what to expect from him if he is a K heavy player. Another reason why I think you always want to look at BABIP in context and why it's not all that useful on its own
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u/2hats4bats Sep 04 '25
It’s a stat that’s more useful to coaches who have a reason to dig into those underlying reasons as opposed to fans who are fine with just attributing it to luck.
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u/necrosythe Orion Kerkering Sep 03 '25
Except it does have a lot to do with luck. And its not really arguable. The stat varies a lot in short time frames, and the difference in long term babip isn't vastly different between a player with high sprint speed and high exit velo vs. A player with lower ranks on both. So even though the batter can influence babip. Its not enough to say that its not still largely luck.
Also like someone else said you can just spend a few moments putting more context to it, by comparing it to the norm for that player or players with similar speed and exit velo.
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u/2hats4bats Sep 03 '25
I vehemently disagree but if you insist that it’s not arguable then I won’t bother.
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Sep 03 '25
[deleted]
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u/Swimming_Elk_3058 Sep 03 '25
It’s some luck but not entirely. In Marsh’s case, it’s because he makes weak contact at an extremely low rate.
Since the stat started being recorded in 2002, Marsh actually has the lowest soft contact percentage in history
He strikes out a ton, put when he puts the ball in play good things generally happen.
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u/Omophorus Sep 03 '25
That's such a fun stat.
I'm not sure how I feel about Castellanos having a better soft contact percentage than Harper, Schwarber, or Turner, though, because it sure seems like he gets a lot more shitty dribblers. But, as ever, the eye test frequently fails.
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u/ditalinidog Sep 03 '25
His xBA and xwOBA are also on the higher side for the team so I’d say he probably both makes good contact a lot and gets lucky sometimes.
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u/jagne004 Sep 03 '25
He is solidly above average-good in terms of exit velo, hard hit pct, sweet spot, and barrel pct (basically every time he makes contact it’s usually good). He just strikes out a lot and doesn’t make enough contact which drags down his overall ceiling and effectiveness
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u/eek_the_cat Sep 03 '25
Not really. I really dislike the use of luck with these terms, its reductive. Given enough plate appearances, luck doesn't play a factor.
Marsh has been around long enough with that BABIP for it to be legit. That being said, he will get worse as he ages and that will come down.
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u/drunk-tusker Sep 03 '25
Sorta, but generally “luck” is implied by a drop or rise in BABIP that isn’t explained by other hitting stats.
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u/felis_scipio John Kruk Sep 03 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
asdf
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u/necrosythe Orion Kerkering Sep 03 '25
Thats literally the smallest influencer on babip that a player can control. Man you guys just say anything with no research its insane.
Sprint speed and the fact that he doesn't hit the ball weakly are both larger factors that controller where the ball goes. Something that A, has largely been debunked. And B is generally actually actively discouraged over just hitting the ball well.
Almost no players flat out hit the ball really well consistently and have bad performance over the long run. To tell a batter they should intentionally alter their swing and timing when they arent even making hard contact to begin with would be stupid.
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u/thegrimranger Sep 03 '25
No more or less than a player who gets a hit, but not a homerun, is "lucky" because it wasn't hit directly to a player in a way that led to their being out.
When a batter makes contact with a pitch and the ball isn't foul, then a hit means the player had good luck, but an out means they had bad luck (I don't believe this, but if we believe in "luck" we can't attribute only half of this statement while dismissing the other half). If we really believe that it's about luck over 2000 at-bats, then we don't need to spend so much time with our statistics.
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Sep 03 '25
In the past we had to kinda assume you had average BABIP until you had sustained success
But nowadays we really should have an idea of if this is because of luck or he’s just making great contact.
In watching him, he SO’s a lot but he’s fast and makes good contact… idk doesn’t shock me if his xBABIP is pretty high
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u/rtcr Sep 03 '25
I’m old school, not an advanced stats guy. Can someone explain the significance of this stat?
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u/faithfulllittlebird Toothpick Rik Sep 03 '25
It’s so funny to me how “stat heads” love to crap on and give no credence to traditionalists who tout scouting and the eye test, and how “eye testers” love to crap on and give no credence to “stat nerds” who tout a strict statistical diet. While in reality, there is very much a place for both philosophies in baseball and ALL professional sports teams continue to use them to this very day. It’s not necessary to be so rigid that either “this” is the way or “that” is the way. They both can, and do, coexist efficiently. Honestly, more than anything else, it seems like just another outlet and excuse for two opposing groups to be mean and dismissive towards one another.
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u/necrosythe Orion Kerkering Sep 03 '25
No idea what youre actually trying to imply. Honeslty if you think any of this has to do with benefitting traditionalist, you just dont know enough about baseball stats or babip. Yes some people try to use baseball stats without understanding them, but other than that what are you even saying?
That because he sustained a high babip that some strawman stat head is wrong for saying babip is mostly luck?
Babip being luck is more talking about pitchers. Where influence is proven to be limited. Anyone with half a brain knows that batter babip is going to be influenced by quality of contact and batter speed.
Just about everything someone thinks is an eye test can be turned into a baseball stat. You can slice and dice situations and everything else down to the most granular parts these days. Which IMO is the beauty of it.
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u/faithfulllittlebird Toothpick Rik Sep 03 '25
I was replying to all the people responding in the comments from both camps taking digs at one another. Nothing at all directed at the poster or the post itself. Although I apparently seem to have ticked you off. Apologies for getting u so seemingly upset. That said, I was very much aware this sort of thing would happen. It’s just interesting to me when people always feel the need to “take sides” on issues that don’t require taking a side.
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u/QuinnTinIntheBin lizard king lover 9000 Sep 04 '25
To think he was batting at .095 at the start of the year
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u/Upstairs-Royal672 Sep 03 '25
He also has the lowest soft contact percentage in recorded history, so to be honest it makes a lot of sense that he would rank very highly on balls he puts in play
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u/Hexidian Sep 04 '25
Is the fact that it’s the highest career BAPIP to do with the fact that his career isn’t done? I would think than most star players trend downward at the end of their career, bringing many career averages down.
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u/PHLEaglesLover Sep 03 '25
some of it is luck some of it is speed, it's also because when Marsh does make contact he does tend to hit it hard. His BABIP has been stabile for most of his Phillies career.
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u/Lefty-18 Malachi Sep 03 '25
Of course, BABIP, another obvious useless baseball stat. I’m still like Marsh but advanced stats should die.
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 Christopher Sanchez Sep 03 '25
Interesting way of saying that you cant understand a certain stat
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u/DeGenZGZ Sep 03 '25
In what way is BABIP useless? It's a very telling stat for both under/overperformance, as well as to tell you what kind of hitter someone is.
(It's also not even an advanced stat. BABIP is as basic as it gets. There ain't no complicated adjustments to it; it's just batting average with a few variables removed.)
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u/Lefty-18 Malachi Sep 03 '25
How does Brandon Marsh lead a statistical category dating back this many years and it have meaning at the same time? Please explain and don’t forget all of the HOF and batting champs he’s better than. Everyone can downvote away but too many people don’t know how to tell if a player is good and rely on shit pumped out by espn
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u/joeco316 Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25
Because leading this category is not a good thing, or at least not inherently a good thing and generally a “not good” thing. It indicates that he gets very lucky. Some of that could be attributed to some sort of skill on his part as others in this thread have mentioned already, but there is basically almost certainly a good amount of luck to what he does.
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u/YesAmogusIsFunny likely the least funny person on reddit Sep 03 '25
stats with more than 3-4 words are dumb and cringe
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u/WandallMarsh Sep 03 '25
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to think of this, but I’m happy with how he’s played the 2nd part of this year