from Amazon
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Pitching to contact and FIP
Kincaid goes through GOOD mathematical gymnastics.
I personally don’t care too much if the difference is under 5 wins for a full-season. FIP gives you a quick view, and that’s all I want from it. And as Kincaid shows, if you try to improve on it to show the pitching to contact scenario, you barely make a dent. If you really wanted to be serious, you’d actually follow the full DIPS calculation to begin with, and use BaseRuns to estimate the runs allowed. That, of course, is a b!tch to do. So, on principle, I’m against using FIP to do anything other than what it is intended for.
Also, FIP tries to remove TWO pieces of information: the impact of the fielders AND the sequence of events. This second part is important to remember. It’s fielding AND sequence independent: SFIP, if you must.