Advanced baseball stats

[The Croom Diaries]

Something to chew on this week...

http://maroonandwhitenation.com/2014...-stats-week-6/

[Saltydog]

nt

[Will James]

FIP don't lie

[RAYn_Man]

FIP is a worthless stat.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

Whatever-stat-fits-your-agenda don't lie

[Lefthandersrule]

FIP is a worthless stat.

Really? So please let all of us in on what you might think is a viable stat.

This stat shows what only the pitcher (and catcher ) control.

Examples being ground balls, walks, Home runs, etc.

I'm not saying FIP is the tell all stat but it does show what the pitcher is doing regardless of the other position players.

[messageboardsuperhero]

Really? So please let all of us in on what you might think is a viable stat.

This stat shows what only the pitcher (and catcher ) control.

Examples being ground balls, walks, Home runs, etc.

I'm not saying FIP is the tell all stat but it does show what the pitcher is doing regardless of the other position players.

You are right except for the part about ground balls- FIP doesn't directly account for that (although technically if you get a lot of ground balls you theoretically should give up fewer home runs, which FIP does account for).

Anyone who really believe FIP is worthless is dead wrong though.

[preachermatt83]

all of them have strengths and weaknesses but the one pitching stat that , to me, best tells how good the pitcher is , is WHIP.

[lefty96]

The real answer is no one stat, baseball or otherwise, can be used to quantify anything. You always need more than one measurement to keep the others in context. Go back to the "Ross Mitchell is lucky" argument, based solely on babip, that would be the acceptable conclusion - that there's no way he could expect to continue to have that many of his struck balls fielded properly. But if you take his babip in context with his % of grounders and v/s his % of line drives/hard hit balls. How Mitchell has success is more apparent. You can never make a fair judgement with one number, people will always try to find one, but I don't think there ever will be. That being said, I'd like to see our team avg's compared to the SEC on the north half of 50% more often than not.

[Lefthandersrule]

Good answer lefty! I agree that no one stat is tell all but the ole ERA just isn't the only stat that should be looked at. Articles are attempting to show the more recently constructed stats to give a more complete view of a pitchers worth.

[lefty96]

I read this yesterday and thought about Mitchell, the piece about Burke Badenhop. . .
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/sunda...-red-sox-rays/

I will add on Mitchell that he has the lowest babip listed and has a defense behind him that is just above average compared to the SEC - that gives good context for the traditional view of babip.

[esplanade91]

We just got beat in the national championship by a team with a really, really bad batting average. Not going to put much on stats. Nothing more than a talking point one way or another.

[lefty96]

Good answer lefty! I agree that no one stat is tell all but the ole ERA just isn't the only stat that should be looked at. Articles are attempting to show the more recently constructed stats to give a more complete view of a pitchers worth.

Don't get me wrong, I like the articles and I enjoy the stats, but any of them, old ERA or new stuff - you can't just pick one and run with it. It's short sighted. I do stats/analytics for a living and alot of people fall in love with one number then get their ass handed to them for ignoring the rest.

[Johnson85]

You are right except for the part about ground balls- FIP doesn't directly account for that (although technically if you get a lot of ground balls you theoretically should give up fewer home runs, which FIP does account for).

Anyone who really believe FIP is worthless is dead wrong though.

So what is a good FIP? Our numbers are all over the place. I assume FIP is an outlier for Mitchell just like BABIP?

[lefty96]

I would suggest adding innings pitched and plate appearances to this, it will give people a better idea of the sample size.

[The Croom Diaries]

So what is a good FIP? Our numbers are all over the place. I assume FIP is an outlier for Mitchell just like BABIP?

It's adjusted so that it looks like what a good ERA should look like. It only weights what a pitcher can control, i.e. walks, K's, HBP, HR. So a pitcher like Lindgren who gets a lot of strikeouts will almost always have a better FIP than a guy who pitches to contact like Mitchell. With our defensive infield Mitchell has a higher value to a team like MSU despite his relatively high FIP, but to a team with mediocre fielders they would rather have the guy with lower FIP.

[dickiedawg]

Nice try, but .984 is not "just above" average... It's first.

[The Croom Diaries]

I would suggest adding innings pitched and plate appearances to this, it will give people a better idea of the sample size.

The purpose of this weekly post are to give stats that aren't available via HailState's stat book. I assume that anyone interested in this level of detail would also want to look at the official stat listings to gain their own perspective.

[The Croom Diaries]

Nice try, but .984 is not "just above" average... It's first.

We have a nice defense no doubt, but in all honestly if our official scorer knew the difference between a hit and an error we'd have 8-10 more errors this year.

[lefty96]

Nice try, but .984 is not "just above" average... It's first.

So, the distribution is pretty flat then. . . so if first place BA in the league is .250 and the avg is .245, is 250 still "good"?