This brings up an interesting point.  Both those who are bullish and those who are bearish on Bannister base their opinions on him based on one season's worth of pitching.  What a player does in his rookie season often isn't what you see from a player for the rest of his career.  We really don't know if he'll always be a low-K pitcher or if he'll do so well at limiting hits, extra base hits and walks.  Bannister is a work in progress.

1. I really didn't mean anything evaluative or judgmental by it. More just a statement of what he is right now, like saying he's right-handed. For whatever reason it just seemed to make the sentence flow better.
2. Considering people didn't think he could be a #5 as recently as a year ago, I don't think saying he's mid-rotation is really a slam.
3. Even then, what is a mid-rotation starter anyway? I honestly don't even know. Gil Meche comes to mind. In my head there's really #1s and #5s and then a bunch of dudes.

MLBTR: Are you familiar with the Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) stat?  It's been suggested that the percentage of batted balls that drop in for hits may be largely out of a pitcher's control.  What are your thoughts on that?

Bannister: I think a lot of fans underestimate how much time I spend working with statistics to improve my performance on the field. For those that don't know, the typical BABIP for starting pitchers in Major League Baseball is around .300 give or take a few points. The common (and valid) argument is that over the course of a pitcher's career, he can not control his BABIP from year-to-year (because it is random), but over a period of time it will settle into the median range of roughly .300 (the peak of the bell curve). Therefore, pitchers that have a BABIP of under .300 are due to regress in subsequent years and pitchers with a BABIP above .300 should see some improvement (assuming they are a Major League
Average pitcher).

Because I don't have enough of a sample size yet (service time), I don't claim to be able to beat the .300 average year in and year out at the Major League level. However, I also don't feel that every pitcher is hopelessly bound to that .300 number for his career if he takes some steps to improve his odds - which is what pitching is all about.

One thing that I work a lot with, and that is not factored into common statistical analysis, is what counts a pitcher pitches in most often - regardless of what type of "stuff" he has. Most stats only measure results, not the situations in which those results occurred. In the common box score, an RBI is an RBI, but it doesn't show the count, number of outs, and number of runners on base when it occurred. For me, the area where pitchers have the most opportunity to improve or be better than average is in their count leverage.

Let me give the fans and young pitchers out there one example of a way that I try to improve my performance, this time with regards to BABIP.

Question to myself: Does a hitter have the same BABIP in a 2-1 count that he does in an 0-2, 1-2, or 2-2 count? How does his batting average and OBP/SLG/OPS differ when he has two strikes on him vs zero or one strike?

These are the type of questions that I will come up with and employ in my starts to see if I can improve my outings. For example, here are my career numbers in the counts mentioned above:

2-1: .380 (19/50)
1-2: .196 (20/102)
2-2: .171 (18/105)
0-2: .057 (3/53)

It is obvious that hitters, even at the Major League level, do not perform as well when the count is in the pitcher's favor, and vice-versa. This is because with two strikes, a hitter HAS to swing at a pitch in the strike zone or he is out, and he must also make a split-second decision on whether a borderline pitch is a strike or not, reducing his ability to put a good swing on the ball. What this does is take away a hitter's choice. If I throw a curveball with two strikes, the hitter has to swing if the pitch is in the strike zone, whether he is good at hitting a curveball or not. He also does not have a choice on
location. We are all familiar with Ted Williams' famous strike zone averages at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It is well-known that a pitch knee-high on the outside corner will not have the same batting average or OBP/SLG/OPS as one waist-high right down the middle. Here is a comparison of the batting averages and slugging percentage on my fastball vs. my curveball:

Fastball: .246/.404
Curveball: .184/.265

The important thing to note is that, with two strikes, if I throw a curveball for a strike, the hitter has to swing at it (and I like those numbers). How does a pitcher use this to his advantage? By throwing
strikes and keeping the advantage on his side as often as possible. It seems like such a simple solution, yet so much more emphasis is placed on "stuff" nowadays and this is often not reinforced. When a pitcher who has great "stuff" employs this line of thinking, his numbers will improve to an even greater degree.

So, to finally answer the question about BABIP, if we look at the numbers above, how can a Major League pitcher try and beat the .300 BABIP average? By pitching in 0-2, 1-2, & 2-2 counts more often than the historical averages of pitchers in the Major Leagues. Until a pitcher reaches two strikes, he has no historical statistical advantage over the hitter. In fact, my batting averages against in 0-1, 1-0, & 1-1 counts are .297/.295/.311 respectively, very close to the roughly .300 average.

My explanation for why I have beat the average so far is that in my career I have been able to get a Major League hitter to put the ball in play in a 1-2 or 0-2 count 155 times, and in a 2-0 or 2-1 count 78 times. That's twice as often in my favor, & I'll take those odds.

His analysis makes the "he had a low BABIP so he'll regress significantly" analysis look pretty simple minded.