Through perusing this site and other, my impression is that, in general, pitchers control walks, strikeouts and home runs and the likelihood of a batted ball in play resulting in a hit is pretty uniform and not controlled by the pitcher--thus the primacy of WHIP as a tool for evaluating effectiveness without luck clouding the picture. If this is true, wouldn't it logically follow that the likelihood of a player getting a hit is purely a function of how often he puts the ball in play. Thus, high strikeout hitters would theoretically have lower batting averages than low strikeout hitters. A quick look at the BA leaders from 2006 show that there is definitely a negative correlation between BA and a strikeouts, but there are notable exceptions among the leaders. Jeter, Cabrera, Holliday, Ramirez, Dye, Berkman, and Howard are all among the leaders. 12 of the top 30 leaders struck out more than 100 times and 17 of 30 struck out more than 90 times. It would seem like these high strikeout high BA players buck the uniform BABIP idea. I'm guessing my logic is probably messed up somewhere in there. If anyone could tell me where I strayed I would appreciate it. Second point, even if BABIP remains relatively constant, is it possible that even taking home runs out of the equation, some players give up more doubles and triples proportionally to their total number of balls allowed in play? I don't see much mention of SLG% allowed--it seems like if you were able to combine SLG% with the park factor, it would be a good diagnostic tool. Thanks., I hope this makes sense.