Tom Tippett at Diamond Mind Baseball had an important article last week looking closely at hits on balls in play and concluding that some pitchers, at least, have more control over them than Voros McCracken’s initial studies revealed. This isn’t shocking news; McCracken’s own research and that of others has already backtracked from the extreme position that pitchers have no effect on hits on balls in play, and Tippett’s research still makes clear that — at least in modern baseball — the pitcher is usually not the driving factor in BABIP. (The conclusions are different for guys like Walter Johnson and Pete Alexander, who appear to have had more control over hits on balls in play).
Read the whole article. There’s also been a bustling discussion of this over at the Baseball Primer.