While certain parts of sporting media have welcomed a wide variety of sabermetrics, it looks as if almost every corner of the baseball word is integrating a few choice metrics into their broadcasts. One of those, which is the focus of this week’s Library update, is batted ball data.

It’s growing increasingly common to see line drive rate, ground ball rate, or fly ball rate dropped into casual baseball conversations outside of the analytics community, which makes this new entry on batted ball statistics for pitchers a useful tool for those just learning about these numbers. What does it mean to say a pitcher is a ground ball pitcher? How are ground balls different from fly balls for a pitcher? Follow the link to learn about the classifications, uses for the data, limitations, and handy reference points.

As always, please comment below if you have questions, find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or stop by our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats, Wednesdays at 3pm.