Orange County Register

After a rousing critique of Batting Average on Balls In Play, or BABIP, at AngelsWin, somebody has started selling this t-shirt:

Funny, and pretty accurate, too! BABIP is a terrible stat for measuring the quality of players, because a) it often reflects  style of play rather than quality of play, and b) it tends to regress toward a fairly small range around the league average. But it is a great stat for measuring the probability of luck, because it fluctuates a lot and spikes in BABIP (for hitters or for pitchers) are often short-lived and not predictive. In other words, you would never say Player A Russell Branyan is better than Player B Albert Pujols because he has a higher BABIP; but you might convincingly argue that Player A’s career season is a fluke because his BABIP is wildly out of line with his career norms.

Quite a nice design, too.

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