Hello and welcome back to my baseball and analytics blog!
In this post, I will be covering the other side of the plate: pitching/defensive statistics.
There are many different statistics and analytics to determine the value of a pitcher and a defense, but the four most commonly used are total wins, earned run average (ERA), walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP), and fielding independent percentage (FIP). The first aspect of a pitcher’s resume people tend to look at is the total wins column. Immediately, this gives insight into how often a pitcher and defense gives their team a chance to win. Obviously, a manager would rather take and value a pitcher more if their total wins column is higher than someone else's.
As a metric for evaluating pitchers, total wins is overly simplistic. Imagine one team hits much better than another and that impacts a pitcher’s win column while another team barely scores any runs for another pitcher. This would yield an inaccurate evaluation of the second pitcher where, in fact, his team is losing despite him pitching well. This is why ERA and WHIP are important and tend to give a more detailed picture compared to just looking at a pitcher's wins. ERA is how many runs on average a pitcher gives up per nine innings and WHIP is how many walks and hits allowed per innings pitched. These two statistics go hand in hand and are often used to see how effective a pitcher is. A lower ERA and WHIP signal a more efficient pitcher.
One major factor is still unaccounted for however. What if a pitcher has excellent defensive players behind him? Or what if a pitcher has a terrible defense behind him? This is where FIP comes into play. FIP gives a glance into how a pitcher would perform with an average defense behind him. This statistic compensates for either having a really above average defense, or for having a very below average defense. We will dive into how FIP is calculated in a future installment of this blog series.
By using all four of these statistics together to evaluate and determine a pitcher’s worth, a much more accurate evaluation can be made. It is important to utilize a holistic approach, use all of the available information, and not fixate on one simple statistic while ignoring the others.
I have attached some links to a couple related articles below.
Thank you for reading and come back for the next entry soon!
Comments