FanPost

Comparing Clayton Kershaw, Jorge De La Rosa, and Jonathan Sanchez using tERA

 

Clayton Kershaw has been getting a lot of hype recently due to his successful 2009 campaign. However, along with that hype has been some backlash with some people comparing Kershaw unfavorably to De La Rosa, and Sanchez. Some of the criticism of Kershaw is that he was incredibly lucky in his low HR/9 rate, and that because he is pitching half of his games in Dodgers Stadium, De La Rosa actually had the better season due to pitching at Coors. Also, because of Kershaw's league leading H/9, he was extremely lucky. But is that really true? Data taking from Fangraphs:

While I like FIP and x-FIP, it doesn't try to measure game conditions. It ignores defense and assumes that batted balls are not relevant. Enter tERA. tERA stands for true Earned Run Average. x-FIP assumes that there is a normalized home run rate. What tERA tries to do is measure the pitchers performance but also includes batted ball data and game conditions. It's also backed up by 40 years of game data to show how a ball hit in similar circumstances over the years would react. Here is a site Explaining tERA.

Basically, according to tERA, Kershaw is really hard to hit, and when hitters actually makes contact with the ball, they have a hard time converted it to a hit.

2009 ERA:

Kershaw: 2.79

De La Rosa: 4:38

Sanchez: 4.24

2009 FIP:

Kershaw: 3.08

De La Rosa: 3.91

Sanchez: 4.17

2009 x-FIP:

Kershaw: 3.90

De La Rosa: 3.76

Sanchez: 4.19

2009 tERA:

Kershaw: 3.09

De La Rosa: 4.69

Sanchez: 3.99

 

So what do you think?

This is a fan-written post that is in no way affiliated with or related to any of the authors or editors of True Blue LA. The opinions reflected in this post do not necessarily reflect those of True Blue LA, its authors or editors.