I was reading a FanGraphs article this morning about hitters whose performance might improve thanks to an improvement of their BABIP compared to their xBABIP. There was one Diamondback on the list of 8 hitters.
Nick Ahmed, who has the second-lowest BABIP-xBABIP in baseball.
Ahmed’s BABIP for 2018 is .247. His xBABIP? 0.347. This blew my mind. It’s not projecting Nick to have a roughly league average BABIP... it’s calling for it to have one of the better BABIPs in baseball.
Is there something that we’re all missing?
The Batting Average
The FanGraphs xBABIP equation used is fairly complicated but the three most influential inputs to the equation are LD%, Hard%, and True IFFB% (true infield flyball rate = FB% x IFFB%).