At this point in the season, your fantasy baseball waiver wire options are probably looking pretty bleak. Rookie pitchers continue to get scooped up at an alarming rate while the hitters shuttle back and forth to the minors with every unsuccessful at-bat. You obviously can try to bolster your roster with the available role players, but you are better off exploring the fantasy trade market.
You don’t have to chase the superstars, as their price tags are always too high, but there are a number of struggling players to consider as prime buy-low candidates. For those who find spreadsheets and other data tables complicated and cumbersome, there is an easy way to track whether a struggling player is just unlucky and capable of turning things around. The metric is called “Batting Average on Balls in Play” (BABIP), and it measures a player’s batting average exclusively on balls hit into the field of play.
It removes outcomes not affected by the opposing defense, so though yes, home runs are not part of it, neither are strikeouts or foul-outs. Typically, what you are looking for is a BABIP right around .300 for a player.
The league average in 2024 is actually sitting around .280, but those of us who like to win prefer players with numbers that are better than league average. The key to your research is looking at what a player’s current BABIP mark is and what his career mark has been.
Oftentimes, we see a player struggling with a .185 BABIP but has a career mark of .310.
Und.
