THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, June 18, 2009

More sabermetrics in the MSM

Lindsey Willhite of the Daily Herald (which is a Chicago paper, though I don’t know anything about its size) talks some good sh!t about FIP and DER:

FIP sees a guy like the Cubs’ Ted Lilly as someone who has benefited from excellent defense (his ERA is 2.94 but his FIP is 4.03), while the Sox’ Gavin Floyd is at the other end of the spectrum. His ERA sits at 4.94, but FIP estimates an average defensive team puts his rightful ERA at 3.80.

...

Through Sunday’s games, the White Sox were tied for eighth in the American League in DER (.692) while the Cubs (.715) shared the major-league lead with Milwaukee.

Now, to indicate how DER and FIP play off each other, the Cubs’ ERA stands at 3.84 but FIP suggests it would be 4.14 without such great fielding.  Conversely, the White Sox’ official ERA of 4.22 only rises to a FIP of 4.24 once you factor in the team’s mediocre fielding.

Well said.  They even had this rather remarkable quote from Rany, the originator of PAP:

In that vein, Jazayerli even suggests baseball’s emphasis on pitch counts - perhaps the sport’s biggest development over the last decade - has become a little too onerous. Of course, forever playing the role of the fan trying to get his point across from the outside looking in, Jazayerli phrases his concern as only a Baseball Prospectus original can: “I almost feel like teams are almost too protective of their pitchers in a way,” he said. “Which is a better problem to have.”

I remember a year or two ago, I emailed Rany my great skepticism with PAP, and I pointed him to my research on how much mileage actually is left on pitchers’ arms.  Even then, he was not as firm on PAP as I had expected.  So, to him to come out like this and be in a position to (potentially) recant everything he said is fantastic.