What The Lincecum Vote Means
Two days ago, the BBWAA ignored win totals and gave Zack Greinke the American League Cy Young award. Today, they did it again, giving Tim Lincecum the NL version despite having only 15 victories, the fewest of any Cy Young winner in the history of the award. Despite my long-winded explanation for why I don’t really care about the BBWAA awards, I feel like it would be silly to not give honor where it is due.
Congratulations to the members of the BBWAA, who have been willing to adapt as the game changes. They deserve recognition for being willing to accept the shift towards better analytical methods. And getting away from wins as a measure of the value of a pitcher is a big first step.
Five years ago, Lincecum wouldn’t have stood a chance in the voting. He might not have even stood a chance a year ago. But there are clearly members of the Writers Association who are not clinging to the analysis that they grew up with. It isn’t just that they gave Keith Law a vote this year. It’s writers like Larry Stone who have been in the newspaper business for 20 years and are helping to educate their fellow scribes.
Today, the BBWAA took a pretty big step back towards credibility. It obviously isn’t a wholesale change, and there are always going to be people resistant to any sort of change, but the shift is taking place. And it’s a welcome occurrence.
If they keep voting like this, I’ll have to start caring again.
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I’ll just keep saying this everywhere and being the wet blanket: if either Wainwright or Hernandez gets to 20 “wins” (something that could easily have happened to either without them throwing a single pitch differently than he actually did, by their bullpen managing to hold one more lead), I think there’s an excellent chance the results are completely different. Definitely so in the NL, and possibly in the AL. So it’s a step in the right direction, but could be just a tiny little baby step.
The culture is changing, man. Only a handful of GMs don’t know what a FIP means. When the Cy Young winner comes out and says “My pitching strategy is to have the lowest FIP possible” in the New York Times, things are going to change. The old motto “you can’t argue with success” just turns out to be true, at least once there’s enough success, over a long enough time, and the guys who really matter (the performers) are acknowledging it.
Yes instead of not knowing what FIP is, now pitchers are noy understanding it.
Isn’t FIP mostly determined by high strikeouts and low homer totals? I.e. what every pitcher everywhere is trying to keep down?
well, by strikeouts, homers and walks. There was a discussion about this sonmewhere else — there’s this whole sort of cult around the virtue “pitching to contact,” and if nothing else, learning about FIP would teach a pitcher that that’s a bad idea; if you can miss bats, you have to miss bats. Trusting your defense sounds nice and everything, but you’re also trusting in randomness to guide the batted balls to where your fielders can make plays on them.
But I think the writers are changing slower than the game itself. I’m waiting for the next time there’s a Lincecum-Wainwright type of decision but the Wainwright guy actually has 20 wins. I think he’ll probably win in a landslide.
Honestly, I think ‘trusting your defense’ spun out of pitchers who were effective with middling strikeout totals, but didn’t walk anybody and kept the ball on the ground. People then seized upon this and said “See!” while ignoring that it wasn’t the non-strikeouts that made these pitchers good. The vagaries of balls in play hurt you a lot more if the contact one gives up typically results in a single and if there aren’t extra ducks on the pond from free passes.
And by a lot more, I obviously meant a lot less.
~~~ Honestly, I think ‘trusting your defense’ spun out of pitchers who were effective with middling strikeout totals, but didn’t walk anybody and kept the ball on the ground. People then seized upon this and said “See!” while ignoring that it wasn’t the non-strikeouts that made these pitchers good. The vagaries of balls in play hurt you a lot more if the contact one gives up typically results in a single and if there aren’t extra ducks on the pond from free passes. ~~~
Kevin, I was thinking of this situation the other day, and specifically 2 cases …
[1] In 2001, Curt Schilling led the league in HR allowed, but it didn;t really matter because a high % of them were solo shots because he didn;t walk many guys (1.4/9).
[2] In 1985, John Tudor, had a statistically great season by not striking many guys out (5.5/9) and by “pitching to contact” (not that I subscribe to the PTC idea), namely by living on the outside corner and allowing batters to pull ground balls to the best left side of the IF in MLB, and give up fly balls to one of the speediest OF’s, possibly ever.
One could point to Tudor’s season and say “Anybody could do that (21-8, 1.93) with THAT defense, duh!” … yet for some reason, none of the other 4 starters on STL thought to do that. There is *something* to be said for “pitching to your team’s strengths”, as being a key member of the team. I don;t understand the NEED some have for completely isolating a pitcher’s performance from what the team does as a whole. What matters most is how pitcher and team work together to win.
Ugh cant you say the same thing about Grienke and Lincecum?
Grienke for example had a worse bullpen, worse defense and worse offense, he could have changed nothing and won 25-
here’s the deal the award is based on what happened not what could have happened- at some point fantasy guys reality does take precident
waaay over analyzed
I just hope they’ve evolved enough by the time Edgar Martinez comes up for HOF voting to look past his counting stats and give him the recognition he deserves for an outstanding career.
I don’t know. Wainwright actually got more 1st-place votes (12 to 11), but not many at 2nd. I think maybe only some of them weren’t swayed by wins, and it worked out in the end anyway.
Oh, yeah, Vazquez got no love, either.
He did get a second-place vote from the aforementioned Law.
What do you make of the fact Will Carroll had Wainwright first? It wasn’t just the “backwards” “traditional” media who voted for him. Obviously Wainwright did some other stuff well this season besides win some games.
I don’t really understand it… but Wainwright was a very good pitcher. After Lincecum, it was pretty up in the air for me. How you vote for anyone but Lincecum first baffles me though. Especially for someone not swayed by wins. I just worry that BP has some new metric that he’s looking at that isn’t based in reality. WAR isn’t perfect, but 2 wins is a pretty substantial advantage. Anyone with a BP subscription know what the WARP numbers are for these guys?
http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9782
BP’s WARP3:
Wainwright 8.3
Carpenter 8.5
Lincecum 8.7
Vazquez 8.9
and… Haren 9.8
I’d love to think that these awards indicate that the BBWAA is moving away from their prehistoric methods of statistical analysis, but I’m not so sure…yet.
It just seems like Greinke was much too dominant in statistics that don’t really require too much outside the box-ing to be overlooked, and his biggest competition – Felix Hernandez – didn’t have overly impressive win totals either. The landslide manner in which he won is encouraging, but I’m still not sold on this vote as a big step in the right direction.
And then with Lincecum, he did have the advantage of being the reigning NL Cy Young award winner, and the voting results weren’t really too impressive. If I’m not mistaken, Wainwright received the most first place votes. It was one of the tightest races in the award’s history, and it seems like the vote split (theoretically) between Carp and Wainwright may have been more of a factor than statistically forward thinking voters.
That said, if Ben Zobrist ends up as a top 4 or 5 name on the AL MVP award ballot, I’ll be celebrating.
I was basically going to say the same thing. The voting has probably improved some, I can acknolwedge that, but it’s still a long way off. Wainwright got the most first place votes, and the only reason Lincecum won at all was likely splitting of votes between Wainwright and Carpenter.
What about when Randy won it with Arizona back in I believe 00-01 and Curt was on the same team, and came in second.
There’s really no way to quantify the role that having voters choose between two players from the same team played. That’s why I said theoretically. But looking at that example, RJ dominated that year in a manner well beyond any of these guys this season, and was clearly an easy choice. Here, niether of the two teammates were so convincingly great, and still we had one of the tightest vote turnouts ever.
I don’t really understand how they would “split” the vote, at least outside of St. Louis. If Wainwright pitched for the Dodgers, would he have gotten more first place votes? I just don’t see them being on the team being an issue. I think that a lot of the traditional sportswriters were choosing between the two, but I think it would have been that way whether or not they were on the same team.
I think the difference was in 1st/3rd votes. I can see some voters having an issue with having a guy who finished 2nd on his own team in either wins or ERA as the 2nd best pitcher in the NL.
As such, what may have benefited Timmy in the ticket splitting is that he got 2nd place votes from a few people who might have put Carpenter/Wainwright there otherwise, and that difference was enough.
Joe Morgan won’t be happy to hear this, I wonder if Dayton Moore thinks Greinke deserved his Cy Young.
He probably doesn’t and is planning a trade to get Greinke out of town b/c he talked about FIP.
Wasn’t he going to trade Greinke for Francoeur before the season?
I assume you meant fewest victories by a starter, but that’s still inaccurate. What about Fernando Valenzuela in 1981? He only won 13 games and won the award.
That was a strike year.
And Gagne and Eck…
And Valenzuela was in a different length season, so that explains that.
“Gagne and Eck” were both relievers, and not the only ones to win the award. Regardless of the strike in 1981, the award was still given out, so, no matter what, saying that he had the fewest wins of any pitcher to win the award is inaccurate.
It was the most wins by a winner in a non-shortened season.
you guys are geeks with these stats. the only stat that matters in any sport (which i’m guessing none of you have ever played besides Playstation) is wins. all these other stats are great little ways of deciding between the 100th and 101st best player, but to give a cy young to a guy who won 15 games is a joke. a guy who lost 4 of his last 7 while team was competing for a wild card is a joke. your team only scores 1 run, then pitch a shutout. that’s what the great pitchers do.
Hi, welcome to FanGraphs. This is, in fact, a baseball geek site. Have a nice day :-)
you must be new here.
Nice sarcasm post. :)
I’m glad we’re all past the point of sending longwinded responses to comments like this. We know we’re right, and that’s all that really matters, right?
The only proper response to this:
http://www.pacdudegames.com/fail/
Michael just broke my sarcasm detector.
Damn thing red-lined, beeped a couple times, then exploded.
I’m a huge Cards fan and I couldn’t agree more. I would have liked to see Wainwright or Carp win as a Cards fan but it really would’ve been a slap in the face at Lincecum and at the advanced metrics out there. There really isn’t a lot of doubt as to which of the 3 was the best pitcher. Though Wainwright and Carp (and Haren and Vazquez) had outstanding seasons, Lincecum was the best pitcher in the NL this season and I’m so impressed that the BBWAA actually picked up on that.
I wonder if a more analytical approach will result in the same guy winning more often.
Pujols could easily have 6 or 8 MVP awards by now, but I think the voters have some aversion to doing that.
No, Barry Bonds was better than him, all those seconds are proper seconds to the absurd seasons that Bonds was putting up in San Francisco.
Well, yeah, Bonds deserved all of his, but Al was robbed in 2006 and certainly had a case in 2007 too.
Considering Bonds could have won in 2000 (though I do think Kent was the right choice), we were awfully close to having two different NL MVPs for the entire decade of the aughts. That actually would’ve been kind of cool.
you guys are bunch of geeks. ” wins don’t matter” give me a break! give me a pitcher with 18 wins over a clown with a low FIP. Lincecum won 15 games. Jason Marquis won more games than him. Lincecum is overrated.
If you really want to troll, you’ll have to try a bit harder than that.
Man, you guys aren’t even trying anymore.
lol… I was attempting to sound like those morons that aren’t smart enough to look deeper than wins and ERA ( michael above).
Oof. My sarcasm detector is broken today.
I can’t wait for the day FIP and wOBA are on the scoreboards at stadiums.
I hope they never are. People are just going to be ignorant until “baseball God” Peter Gammons or some of the other bums on Baseball tonight use them. Until them I will just enjoy knowing more about other players than other so called “fans” of the game.
When FIP is on the scoreboard we’ll rail about the underappreciation of ground balls. When wOBA is on the scoreboard we’ll talk about the (minor) flaws of context neutral stats (zOMG, slow players might be slightly underrated by linear weights, although they probably make up for it with baserunning once they’re on). They’ll never get our pot o’ goooooold!
Where by pot o’ goooooooold I mean something like smug intellectual superiority. Come on, Jr05s, why is it enjoyable to know more than other fans? Wouldn’t it be more fun if random ballpark conversations were really intelligent?
An excerpt from the site (click the link to see more):
…That’s two Cy Youngs in 2.5+ years of service. Lincecum is a Super Two this year. His arbitration potential in unheard of. Ryan Howard set the first year arb. award record in 2008, at $10 million. That was with only a single MVP to his name. Lincecum — who has 676 Ks in less than 600 IP and a career WHIP of 1.15 — stands to make more money than Free Agent SP John Lackey. He even has the potential to make more money than Matt Holliday, depending on the kind of long term deal Holliday is seeking.
Fangraphs valued Lincecum’s +8.2 WAR 2009 season at $37.0 million. Only three players (Greinke (+9.4 WAR), Zobrist (+8.6 WAR) and Pujols (+8.4 WAR)) were more valuable last season. Bill James is predicting that Lincecum will almost exactly repeat his 2008 numbers (+7.5 WAR) in 2010. That would make Lincecum’s performance worth between $30 and $35 million.
The good news for that Giants is that Lincecum is open to a long term deal. The bad news is how much Lincecum will probably cost. The Giants were dead last in wOBA/OPS last year and are in dire need of a quality hitter. According to MLBTR, the Giants’ payroll stands to be around $80 million next season. They opened the 2009 season with an $82.6 million payroll, so the team seems a bit cash strapped at the moment. The Giants, however, will not have Lincecum forever and he’s only going to get more expensive (Just imagine the second year arbitration award potential if Lincecum were to pull off the three peat). SF has a great, young pitching staff and the window for winning will shrink as more and more get deeper and deeper into arbitration.
It’s pure speculation on my part, but if the Giants have the money lying around, they should look into trading Jonathan Sanchez over to the Brewers for Prince Fielder. Sanchez is the kind of cheap, quality talent the Brewers are desperately seeking and Fielder is…well, Fielder. Can’t hurt to add a .400+ wOBA bat to a .305 wOBA team.
Johnathan Sanchez for Prince Fielder?! If that’s all it takes, I demand the Ms trade Jose Lopez and Ryan Rowland Smith for Fielder. You don’t think they’d do that? Aww shucks….
Well, they could trade Sanchez, Barnes, and Alderson for him. Oh wait…
I was totally on board until you said Sanchez for Fielder.
There is no way they would do that straight up. Zip. None. Nada. You would even need to add in a few good prospects to have a shot at it.
I agree. You probably need more. Unless you consider that the Brewers are poor and desperate. Moving fielder makes room for Gamel, gets them Sanchez and allows them to afford Lackey.
Sanchez straight up seems a bit ridiculous, but you could structure a deal around that basis
Joe Saunders won 16 games. Just as many as Greinke did so.. he should’ve been in the Cy Young contention what the hell.? He also lost 1 less game than Greinke did! This is outrageous hahahaha. Tim Wakefield 17-12 4.67 ERA in 2007 . oh man I can get a good list going.
Joe Saunders couldn’t wash Zack Greinke’s jock-strap.
No. The point is wins *don’t* matter (as much as some say). Your moronic post is actually making that argument.
I think erik agrees with you on that one. You should re-read his post.
Well Sanchez for Fielder clearly wouldnt be in it of itself. Maybe you give up Cain instead if you want it 1-1. Brewers really want pitching bad.
Otherwise fine, you take a gamble with Gamel
The BBWAA is NOT accepting analytical methods.
They’re freaking out that the “sabermetrics” guys left Carpenter off the ballot, and further, in their Luddite manner, they’re assuming it must be a conspiracy, because the rank-and-file guys all kind of wink and nod and listen to each other talk about who’s the best before voting, so the “sabermetrics” guys must have got together to leave him off. It certainly couldn’t be the numbers!
To be fair, I’ve seen no indication that Keith Law’s comment sections are indicative of BBRAA feelings on this matter.
This is even better than Greinke winning, IMO.
Greinke was a slam dunk choice for best AL pitcher. But the NL, Carpenter had a lower ERA (obviously not a perfect stat, but okay for starters), and WHIP (once again, not great, but okay) than Lincecum. That being said, Lincecum was a little bit better as a result of his strikeout totals.
They could’ve very easily awarded Carpenter and I don’t think many people (even us) would’ve been all that upset. It’s obvious that they dug a bit deeper on the numbers this time around.
And the whole innings thing also.
And wow, can we get a little more original next time we attempt to troll. Not even Joe Morgan would say Jason Marquis is a better pitcher than Tim Lincecum.
…okay maybe he would.
He did win just as many games as Lincecum did.
*ducks*
/bombs villages
At least you didn’t kill any kittens.
Nobody upset that Halladay didn’t get more than 3rd place votes in the AL?
…and here it seems like only a couple years ago they were screwing Pedro Martinez out of multiple Cy Youngs (to give it to Barry Zito, of all people!) and a MVP…
Ugh, don’t even remind me of the 2001 vote.
Pedro even had a better win percentage than Zito.
Pedro 2002 WAR: 8.3
Zito 2002 WAR: 4.4
Ugh now I’m pissed.
Lincecum’s OPS against (.561) was 20 points lower than Carpenter’s .581. That’s reasonaly close. Wainwright’s .646 was 85 points higher. That’s not close.
For context, in two more starts, Adam threw 7.2 more innings than Tim — and gave up 48 more hits and 7 more home runs while yielding two fewer walks.
Aside from his advantage in a team statistic (wins), Wainwright didn’t come close to Lincecum (and I haven’t even mentioned Tim’s strikeouts).
What the stats seem to indicate to me, as a pitching nut, is that when Lincecum gives up hits … he gives up runs.
Meanwhile, Wain and Carp, were able to keep runners from scoring more often.
ERA’s are comparable. Makes me wonder if there is a big desparity in Lincecum’s effectiveness in “Windup v. Stretch”. (Something to look up)
A guy that doesn’t give up many hits and strikes out a ton(TL55), allows a similar amount of runs as guys (CC29 & AW50) that allow more hits and strike out fewer batters. Team defense is not the only possible explanation.
Lincecum is the most exciting thing toi happen to pitching (‘specially pitching mechanics) since Pedro’s/Unit’s dominant run.
Lincecum’s strand rate was above-average, but fairly close to his career norm (though of course that should be regressed to the league norm, given how short his career’s been so far). Carp and Wainwright had even higher strand rates, well above their career norms and their recent performances. Maybe it was defense. Maybe it was luck. But it almost certainly something special that Dave Duncan taught the two of them this year.
ARGH!
*almost certainly wasn’t*
Strike Out pitchers tend to maintain higher LOB%, though
A) Carpenter isn’t a strikeout pitcher.
B) Wainwright didn’t become as good at stranding runners while pitching seven innings at a time as Mariano Rivera is at stranding them pitching one or two innings at a time. I will say that with a high degree of confidence. The only starting pitcher to play this decade with a career strand rate over 75% is Pedro. 79% and 80% are unsustainable rates, especially for Carp and Wainwright. I will say that with an extremely high degree of confidence.
[1] The “newly intelligent” BBWA is not likely as enlightened as posters here are giving them credit for.
[2] They could as just as easily voted for who they (a) felt is the best pitcher in the league, (b) has the most “highlight videos”, (c) is the most exciting, (d) just went with the reigning cy, (e) were/are over-enamored with strikeouts, or (f) something else.
I’m a self-admitted stat’s geek trapped in an athlete’s body, and love a good mixture of sabermetrics and traditional “observations” from watching the game we love.
I viewed the race as basically an “even race” going into August.
Here’s how each of the 3 leaders fared in their final 10 starts with both teams in pursuit of the playoffs …
Linc = 3-4 3.15 ERA, 68.2 IP, 45 H, 27 BB, 70K
Wain = 6-1 2.38 ERA, 68 IP, 59 H, 13 BB, 66K
Carp = 6-1 2.22 ERA, 69 IP, 55H, 19 BB, 57K
Linc’s last 10 games featured a game where he allowed 5 runs to CIN in a ND, 3 good starts against COL (2-1), 2 G v. LAD (1 good, 1 horrible) where he went 0-1. He lost a game he could’ve won (PHL), but also got a ND in a game he could have lost (CIN).
Wain gave up 2ER in 7IP v. LAD in a ND, pitched well in all games but one … where he earned a win despite giving up 6R to PIT, beat COL on 2ER over 8IP.
Carp beat LAD with 2ER in 8IP, and got a ND v. COL with 1ER over 7IP, pitched well in each game except for a 7ER effort against ATL, which accounts for his only loss over the last 10 starts.
A lot of the talk is over how MUCH more dominant Lincecum is over the other two, and I don;t think it’s as significant as some are positing. Lincecum is the “more dominant” pitcher, IMO, but that doesn’t mean he had a more “dominant season”, especially in ‘crunch time’ (if one considers it does exist).
I could accept any of the 3 as Cy Young, but think that if the roles were reversed (lincecum pitched his team to the playoffs over the last 10 games), and one of the other 2 were to win the award that people would be going ape-poop. I don;t discount “style-points” and “highlight reels” as being more significant factors to the voting results rather than “emphasis on sabermetrics” (I think you guys are implementing wishful thinking).
IMO, both Carp and Wain pitch noticeably better than Lincecum in the “stretch run”, while conceeding Lincecum had a bit tougher schedule over the last 2 months. Still, 3-4, 3.15 when you’re team is battling for post-season has to count somewhere.
On opening day, the 2009 Cy Young award was Lincecum’s to Lose, and depsite some early hotness from Haren and some under the radar pitching by Vasquez (often in low pressure situations), Lincecum was on his way to repeating. But, then August and September happened, and Timmy battled some injury and pitched a couple of stinkers.
We’ll see next year if “Wins matter”. My guess is if Lincecum leads the league in Wins, and someone like say, Haren, Harden, etc leads the league in “sabermetrics” that wins will once again be “King”.
We’ll see if Sabermtrics really matter when it comes time to the MVP vote. We’ll also see if “split votes” among teammates hurt any of the NYY candidates. My giess is that “traditional stats” and “feel from watching highlights” are still King in the voting process.
As a Giants fan, I can assure you that Lincecum will not lead the league in wins. Also, I think Lincecum had a lead in early August, and it became closer at the end of the year.
I was reading last night that the 2 SF-Area writers voted for Wainwright and Carpenter as their #1 votes.
They listed Lincecum’s decreased performance as the season went on and his drastic split in performance home v. road, as major contributors. In short, he was awesome in a hitter-friendly park, not as much on the road. Strange, I don’t recall reading the same things being said of Sandy Koufax, even though his road ERA was something like 1.5 pts higher during his amazing 3-5 year run. The comparisons between Lincecum and Koufax don’t stop there. I hope people appreciate what we’re seeing in Lincecum … and by the voting, I’m guessing they do.
But, I do agree, for him to win 22+ games, he’s going to have be even better than he currently is (imagine that!) or have one of those years where he gets a lot of favorable draws in pitching matchups (against other teams 3-5 starters), division teams have down years (although one could say that happened this year with ARZ losing Webb and SDP being SDP), and him eating up even more innings. I think as his career goes on, SFG will be more willing to allow him to accumulate even *more* innings.
Right now, I think his frame and mechanics are sort of an unknown. His delivery is so violent with an extreme stride length (much greater than height; stride length generally = height of player) and maximal shoulder-hip rotation (right shoulder facing 3B as belt buckle faces home plate) — It’s Freak’ing beautiful, if you can pull it off — are unknowns to the baseball world because we haven’t really seen a guy with his slight frame and mechanics before (or at least in recent memory).
Lots of predictions that he will suffer a major injury, but also some predictions that his athleticism and “sinewy strength” is why he can optimize and sustain this delivery. An interesting aspect to me will be whether he can still use the same mechanics as he approaches 31 or 32 and his athleticism decreases a tad. I’m guessing he’ll make some tweaks as he ages.
I will say this, currently in the pitching mechanics world, Lincecum is THE hot topic. If he proves sturdy (and I think he will), he will change (perhaps drastically) A LOT of what we think we knew about the mechanics of pitching … but he also might be one of those rare combinations that others cannot replicate.
I will say it again, if the voting were done today, Pedro would have won his fourth Cy Young over Zito.
http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2009/11/20/what-the-fip-cy-voters-still-missed
“FIP is a great stat when trying to project the future. If I were a scout or a GM, I’d be all over pitchers who had a good FIP.
However, when we’re talking about the Cy Young, it’s not about projecting the future. It’s about evaluating what the pitcher actually did. And as far as evaluating what he did, an out is out is an out.
What really matters in pitching? Getting outs. Preventing runs.
Fortunately, we already have two excellent, garden-variety stats that tell us what we need to know about these things. As far as getting outs, opponents’ on-base percentage is the ultimate measure. Its easier-to-calculate cousin is WHIP. As far as preventing runs, we’ve got ERA.
Lincecum had a 2.48 ERA and a WHIP of 1.05, while Carpenter’s numbers were 2.24 and 1.01. Looks to me like Carpenter did a better job than Lincecum at those two jobs: getting outs and preventing runs.”
Jimbo—Interesting.
My objection to FIP (specifically looking at it as THE stat, rather than as a collection of stats), is that it looks to remove team defense from the pitching aspect of the situation, and I view pitcher and team defense as being 2 aspects that work together in harmony (or should).
I look at this primarily from my experience as a pitcher. If this is incorrect, someone please elbarote why.
When I get the ball on the mound, the first thing I would look at is where my middle infielders are positioning and what the situation is.
For example: This a runner on 1B and less than 2-outs, my SS/2B are going to be positioning “up the middle” based on the situation (provided we do not have very accurate scouting reports that show we should be positioned a little differently). Now, as a pitcher I KNOW that I need to do whatever I can to try and influence the hitter to hit the ball up the middle. For me, as a LHP, this means, in this particular situation a well-placed change-up on the outside corner may have a great chance of being a weak grounder in the hole, versus a routine 2-hopper to SS, which plays AGAINST our team defense concept. The result might be an IF single, instead of a GIDP. That’s MY fault, not theirs. My better strategy is a 2-seamer starting in and running over the middle or outside corner, down in the zone … or a cutter starting away and breaking more over the plate (again, down in the zone).
If I elevate the ball a little too much, allowing for a hard grounder or liner through the IF gaps, then again, that is MY fault, not the defenses.
This is but one example of hundreds (possibly). If my defense is playing the batter to “pull” and my pitching approach (location, selection, etc) is influencing the batter to hit the ball “away” …
I do understand why a stat would want to isolate a pitcher’s contibutions particularly in a FO aspect or for stat predictions …. but as far as evaluating a pitcher’s performance or contributions to the team, I’m not sure “FIP is IT” (while understanding it is to others).
For a pitcher like CC29, whose “calling card” seems to be a 2-seamer/sinker that influence GB%, rather than striking everyone out, FIP might not be the best indicator, especially if considering the team defensively ‘strategizes’ based on CC29′s “sinker-strength”.
I’m new to FIP despite reading DC’s 7-part series on it, so it’s also possible I don;t have a full appreciation of the statistic and its importance.
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