Anyone who tells you that luck doesn't play a big role in baseball is either lying or joking.
A pitcher who induces a weak grounder up the middle doesn't become any worse if it passes undeterred to Derek Jeter's left. Nor is the slugger who smashes a deep fly ball into the gap any less talented because Franklin "Death to Flying Things" Gutierrez makes an amazing diving catch.
The eternal question is: How can we differentiate between luck and skill in baseball?
One of the most incredible innovations of the sabermetric movement is the quantification of luck. While it's impossible to truly isolate players' talent from luck in their performance, some of these newfangled statistics can give us a pretty good idea of which players are the beneficiaries of good luck, which are struggling through no fault of their own, and which are producing at about the level they should be.
Just in time for fantasy baseball season, here are seven stats that help to quantify or isolate luck. Know these numbers and you can master your league.
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