In 2006, Shouse had a BABIP of .297 and had tremendous strand numbers. Last year it was .310 and he had tremendous strand numbers. It is not entirely uncommon for specialist relievers, like Shouse, to have much worse FIP totals than ERA simply because they are only going to be in for 0.1 or 0.2 at a time. A bad outing in 6 IP is much different than a bad outing in 0.2 IP. Nobody, myself included, expected Shouse to go a full year without letting an inherited runner score but it was just ironic as to the timing.

I’m currently working on a relief pitcher evaluative system that helps measure the different types of relievers and relief situations. I dislike the usage of most common stats when referring to relief specialists if for no other reason than they are only in for 0.1 or 0.2 and two or three bad games out of 30 can greatly inflate their seasonal numbers even though, theoretically, they did their job 27/30 or 90% of the time.

If you have any ideas for this definitely get in touch. Seidburns850@aol.com.

Coming out of last night, his actual ERA had regressed to 3.52, closer to, but still below his new sabermetric ERA of 5.35 (lower because of 0 walks, 1K, and 2/3 innings pitched). His BABIP meanwhile, had risen to .250, a more normal, but still below average, level, which takes into account the hits he gave up on one bad night.

Put another way, Shouse had been unusually lucky on the field relative to his sabermetrics. He (and Eric) was a bit unlucky that his “streak” of stranding runners came apart in such a big way last night. In the long (and not so long) run, however, it had to come apart because it was a statistically improbable event to begin with.