Quote Originally Posted by Bullmutt View Post
Question for anyone: Why are homers excluded when calculating BABIP?
I'm no expert but my understanding is that BABIP was designed as a metric to try and show how "lucky" a hitter is. So it measures only batting average on balls that the defense has a chance to make a play on (therefore excluding HR's, at least "outside the park" HR's). For example, you could have a heavy groundball hitter who has a high BABIP because a lot of his hits find holes in the infield. Over the course of the season, the statistical probability would be that his BABIP would decrease due to either more balls being hit right at infielders or infield shifts keeping more balls from getting through (or both). In general, line drive hitters and groundball hitters with lots of speed (like Robson) tend to have a pretty high BABIP, whereas flyball hitters and groundball hitters that are slower tend to have lower BABIP.