Comments on: Pfft, Who Needs A Good K/BB?

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:25:53 +0000

Okay, I see your point, and apologize for misunderstanding/taking it the wrong way. FIP measures the HR, BB, and K, leaving the stats out of a pitcher’s control out of its calculation. My point, which I guess didn’t come through as well as I would have hoped, is that both of them have had much higher LOB rates in the last 30 days than in the time prior, while Eveland has had a .300 BABIP and Smith comes in amongst the lowest at .218.

Based on their lower K numbers and higher BB numbers, their FIPs have been 4.01 and 5.15 in this span, however Smith has outdone his much more due to such a low BABIP.

I didn’t mean to imply their K/BB is necessarily correlated with out- or under-performing the FIP with ERA, but rather that, for their FIPs to be lower they will need to increase strikeouts and decrease walks.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:47:42 +0000

And the point of my post, and Iâ€™m not sure how anyone could miss it either considering I stated it as clearly and unambiguously as possible, is that K/BB rates have little if any bearing at all on any discrepancies between FIP and ERA in either direction. Please check the Advanced tab of FanGraph’s leaderboards to confirm this. A low K/BB guy is just as likely to outperform his FIP as he is to underperform it, and he’s more or less just as likely to outperform his FIP as a high K/BB guy is. Yes, you leave more to chance when you don’t strike men out, but FIP already takes all of these controllable skills into account while normalizing the things largely out of the typical pitcher’s control (BABIP, LOB%).

Dana Eveland’s ERA has a slight edge on his FIP because of a .285 BABIP and a 75.3 LOB%. Gregory Smith is kicking FIP’s ass because of a .255 BABIP. It’s that simple. The only misunderstanding was on your part.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:58:29 +0000

Yes, the point of this post, and I’m not sure how anyone could miss it really, is that Eveland and Smith have outdone their FIP all year, which has been higher than their ERA due to their low K/BB ratios. FIP is calculated by incorporating the K,BB, and HR, which are the only three controllable outcomes for a pitcher.

Therefore, if your K numbers are low, and BB numbers high–which would result in a poor K/BB ratio, it isn’t very likely to produce a tremendous FIP unless you allow no home runs or something of that sort. Misunderstanding or not, this is all very clear in the article as I just re-read it twice.

There was nothing in this post pertaining to how or why they have outdone it but rather evidence suggesting what they would need to work on for their success to be a result of skill and not luck or defense.

By: Isaac

Isaac — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:14:35 +0000

Lucas, unless I completely misunderstood Eric’s post, you are saying the same thing as him. His whole point is that they need to/should improve their ratios in order to make their success more legitimately real as opposed to lucky. Looks like a simple misunderstanding.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:57:02 +0000

Eric, please explain how a low K/BB ratio allows a pitcher to sustainingly outperform his FIP to any statistically significant degree, let alone being the primary reason for the discrepancy. Seriously. Your explanations are classic.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:16:35 +0000

Well, since I’ve been knee-deep in old newspapers for research for my next book (on Bucky Walters, pitcher from 1935-48), Reds manager Bill McKechnie did something similar; he would go for some of the best defenders to offset his pitchers average or below average K/BB ratios. The Reds won the world series in 1940.

Billy did mention in Moneyball that he builds for success in the season to get the team into the playoffs and then, once there, it’s essentially a crapshoot where anything can happen.

By: obsessivegiantscompulsive

obsessivegiantscompulsive — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:12:56 +0000

The problem is that Billy may be building for success in a baseball season but not during the playoffs.

Baseball Prospectus wrote a book, Baseball Between the Numbers, and in Chapter 9.3, they studied what is correlated with playoff success. The three factors that were significantly correlated with playoff success were: 1) K/9 of the staff; 2) closer effectiveness as defined by WXRL; and 3) team defense as defined by their defensive metric. Thus, you want a staff full of strikeouts artists, much like the Giants currently have with Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez.

Instead, Billy has traded away his two top K/9 starters in Haren and now Harden, while keeping his low K/9 pitchers like Blanton and Duchscherer, and trading for low K/9 pitchers like Eveland and Smith. And his previous rotations were low on K/9 as well with Hudson, Mulder, Zito heading them up.

Relying on low K/9 starters mean you have to rely on your defense for outs, leaving it to chance how well you do in getting the other team out.

By: BDDBrandon

BDDBrandon — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:56:25 +0000

I imagine the DER could account for around 50% of the FIP-ERA deviation. Given FIP is calculated based on a league average fielding in a league average park, the A’s currently are benefitting from their surroundings.

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:31:53 +0000

A best-in-baseball 0.723 DER goes a long way to making up for those “missing” strikeouts… Exactly how much of that FIP discrepancy can be accounted for by defense is beyond me.