(click chart for larger image)Jeremy Hellickson is having a stellar year. His numbers are superb across the board, and he’s winning games. He’s by far our best pitcher and among the best in AAA baseball. We are fortunate Tampa Bay doesn’t need him right now.
On a related topic (stat-geek warning!) Carlos Hernandez’ performance last night was pure fodder for the baseball numerologists. Going into the game his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) was 4.68, his ERA was 3.10, and his won-loss record was 2-0.
He took the loss and is now 2-1.
But, since the play in which an error was committed could have ended the inning, all the runs scored thereafter were “unearned”. Hernandez lasted two more innings. So, for the night he had 0 earned runs and his ERA dropped from 3.10 to 2.73.
Of course, no one watching could call it a strong performance (except for the seven strikeouts — that was impressive). He took 94 pitches to get through 4 innings and he gave up a home run and two walks. His FIP barely changed, from 4.68 to 4.65.
So, you’ve got to score one for the sabremetricians on this one, the FIP sure looks like it judges pitchers better than ERA, at least in the case of Hernandez.
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Enjoying the graphs, and your recent stats focus (not too much, not too little, just right). FIP is better than ERA, but to me DIPS is better than FIP, and tERA may be best of all (see Statcorner). Great work Chris.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that I have trouble computing tERA on my own and Statcorner has a lag of a couple of days. FIP is probably good enough for my purposes of trying to get a grip on trends and finding ways to display those trends.
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