There's debate within the SABR community about how to handle BABIP - there are components of it that are luck, components that depend on the hitter, components that depend on the defense (both skill and defensive shifts), and variables like the kind of "stuff" a pitcher has on a given day. This article on Baseball Prospectus has a ton of the arguments for and against BABIP's relationship to luck: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20140 Back to the original topic - Whether Pino can hang his hat on superior skills or superior luck, either way management has decided that they'd rather have Pino than Deduno on Thursday, and they might (and probably will) make another move based on how Pino does against the White Sox. I think the move is based a great deal on Deduno's last two bad starts, and the Front office wanting to see someone else take his turn this time through the rotation. It was Pino's turn in the rotation, and he's been better than Deduno so far this year.