Comparing Clayton Kershaw, Jorge De La Rosa, and Jonathan Sanchez using tERA
by Tripon on Mar 1, 2010 11:10 AM PST
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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?
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You kids with your fancy new stats
No more raining on Bruins Nation's rainy parade, they took their ball and went home.
I think
Sanchez was a completely different pitcher after he was demoted to the bullpen so using full year comparisons does not do him justice. His xERA from July – Sept fluctuated between 3.09 – 3.67. Sanchez is someone who will give Clayton a run for his money when it comes to K/9. Like Clayton, control is what he needs to master, if so Sanchez has a bright future.
Wouldn't the comparisons
be centered around what the expectations are for 2010? Sure given their age their is no comparison between their career arcs but headed into 2010 I’d say a legitimate question is who will have the better season.
I have no idea
what the comparison would be centered around. It wasn’t laid out anywhere. If anything, it seemed to be centered around 2009 results. Good question.
vr, Xei
Wow
This tERA stuff is fantastic. There appears to not be a lot out there on the subject, but I could see this being a very cool measuring stick.
It was only released in June 2009. The potential for tERA is pretty big. We’ll probably more analysts using it over the next two years.
It seems huge
But difficult. The reason why ERA, Batting average, etc. are so mainstream is because of how easy they are to calculate.
Even the advanced stuff like WAR, fairly sophisticated fans (like xeifrank) can calculate it on their own. But not tERA. You would just have to accept it. Like UZR I guess.
by Michael White on Mar 1, 2010 4:21 PM PST up reply actions
Not really that complicated for people
who are interested.
Just an assignment of values to events like wOBA.
by Chad Moriyama on Mar 1, 2010 10:28 PM PST up reply actions
Is it really backed by 40 years of data at this point? The article linked seems to suggest that in 2050, it’ll be backed by 40 years…which would make it one year of data right now. And while I don’t know too too much about stats, I’d be willing to guess that data wouldn’t change a whole lot, so it probably doesn’t really matter, especially when comparing stats from a specific year using that year’s data.
Still, seems really cool.
I guess it would change a bit in 40 years
Outfielders get stronger and faster. That’s really what we are measuring here right?
Also, bat speeds would have gotten much quicker in 40 years.
by Michael White on Mar 1, 2010 4:23 PM PST up reply actions
Yeah, those make sense
At a certain point though down the line, data from today wouldn’t be especially relevant to the calculation, either. Maybe a few year average, or even just year-by-year would actually be best.
compare
Sanchez and De La Rosa are both good-Here is the real comparison-would you trade Kershaw for either of them? Even if he wasnt 21 and the money was equal. I damn sure wouldnt!
He was ,is and will be better than both of them.
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