Better Know a Stat- Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP)

giving us a teaser in your first post. Does the dude who came up with the theory that pitchers have no control over what happens after the ball leaves the bat still working for the Red Sox?

I’d like to know the reasons behind the alogrithm. Why HR * 13, why any of the multipliers? How do we trust the mutipliers are accurate?

per Dylan Hernandez:

Ethier is guaranteed $6 million this year, including a $500,000 signing bonus. His $9.25-million base salary in 2011 will increase by $25,000 if he makes 600 plate appearances this year, an additional $50,000 if he makes 650 plate appearances and yet another $50,000 if he makes 675.

In addition, Ethier can earn $125,000 in incentives based on plate appearances each season: $25,000 for 600, $50,000 for 650 and $50,000 for 675.

Potentially $375k in incentives (basically the 2010 PA incentives are double that of 2011)

from the Dodgers:

Per Ed Price of AOL, the Mets offered Bengie Molina $5.5m, but he turned them down because he preferred the “familiarity” of SF.

Tony Jackson has a wonderful article on Kim Ng up on ESPN.com. I loved this quote from Broxton’s agent:

“I think it’s a tribute to her that more of her cases don’t go to arbitration,” Abbott said. "She might say it makes it look like she isn’t tough enough, but I think that is a disservice to her. … The arbitration system is set up to find middle ground, and that is what she is so good at. I would guess that more times than not, that middle ground has teetered her way as opposed to the agent’s way. That goes back to preparation and the ability to set forth what her arguments are and her rationale is.

“As an agent, I always make sure I’m thoroughly prepared before I talk to her. If I’m not ready, I say, ‘Kim, I’ll call you back,’ because that would be like taking a knife to a gun fight. You know she is going to be prepared for every angle you come at her from.”

[Good work Mike, and a nice continuation to “Better Know A Stat”.]

I don’t have time at the moment to browse through Paul’s links above, but BIPs represent a good percentage of PAs that are not being used in the evaluation of FIP, so I wonder what constitutes a sufficient sample size for FIP to consider the measurement meaningful.

For one example, Randy Wolf pitched 862 PAs last year, allowing 24 HR, issuing 57 unintentional BB, hitting 6 batters, and striking out 160. So his 2009 FIP is based on only 247 PAs, or a light season for a middle reliever. In a lot of cases, we’d scream “small sample size” for something based on 247 PAs.

I suppose Paul’s rewording of “the distribution of true talent over [the] control [for where the ball goes once it is hit by the batter] is very narrow.” leads me toward a claim that the FIP for a full season is as valid as other measures that are valid for a one-season window – the other 615 PA for Wolf end up roughly the same no what – but it’s a little hard to accept at first blush.

As an aside, if the distribution of true talent over the control of the direction of the batted ball is very narrow, is that also true of the control of the speed of the batted ball? Anecdotally, one would think that some pitchers are consistently better than others at inducing batters into poorer contact and that slower-hit balls more likely turn into outs.

Is a better predictor, btw.

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/mike_silva_chronicles_parts_1_through_10_placeholder/

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2010/01/giants-designate-jesus-guzman-for-assignment.html

This guy is intriguing. I think we should pick him up. The giants DFAed him and hes only 25, hit well in Fresno last year and plays 2b and 3b.

If I may be so bold as to cross-post, I wrote up an article on FIP as well during the 2009 season for Purple Row as part of the Counting Rocks column.

http://www.purplerow.com/2009/4/1/817712/fip-why-you-dont-deserve-that-era

Anyhow, as for actual discussion, I do enjoy using FIP as somewhat of an indicator of what’s going on with a pitcher who seems to be over or underproducing relative to his career line, or at least reasonable expectations. To quote the geniuses from FJM (and this is actually from their glossary entry regarding BABIP):

What does this all mean? Well, if your favorite pitcher gets off to a terrible start, but he is striking out roughly the same number of guys per 9 innings that he has in the past, and he’s walking about the same number of guys he usually has, and he’s giving up HR at the same rate he usually has, but he’s allowing a BABIP of like .390, do not despair – he has gotten a little bit unlucky, probably, since the league is not going to have a .390 BA overall for the whole year. His BABIP will probably regress a little over time, and his ERA will "magically" go down. And then Kevin Kennedy will attribute the decrease in ERA to "getting his confidence back" or something, and you will smile knowingly.

basically looking at FIP kind of does the job of looking at K9, BB9, and HR9 all in one. It’s kind of like a kid saying “I’m sick!” and you taking their temperature and saying “well, your temperature is at 98.6, so how much candy DID you eat last night?”. But in this case, it’s the pitcher saying “My ERA sucks!” and you checking their FIP and saying “well, your FIP isn’t really out of line from your career line…how well has your defense been playing lately? Have you been hanging curveballs again?!”

All that summed up is saying “well his FIP is normal so he’s not really doing anything differently”

Now that all said, I don’t like using FIP in all situations, just because you end up with guys like 2009 Jason Grilli (4.18 FIP, 6.05 ERA) and 2009 Glendon Rusch (4.28 FIP, 6.75 ERA) – it’s hard to limit yourself to three true outcomes when you’re leaving fastballs right over the plate. It’ll underrepresent guys like Aaron Cook or Joel Pineiro because so much of their game revolves around putting the ball into play.

So anyhow, yeah, FIP is an awesome tool to use, just because if you can remember (13*HR+3*BB-2K)/IP+3.2 you can whip FIP up real quick anywhere you have a cellphone calculator.

Thanks for posting this, good writeup!

You’re the 7th search result on google when searching for “Fielding Independent Pitching”. That’s out of 43,000 results!