Quote:
Originally Posted by NCBeachBum
I think there would have to be some serious engine overhaul for xFIP to have a place in OOTP. IRL (I'm going to pull numbers out of my butt here for a feel example rather than look up the real ones) 10% of flyballs turn into homers, with groundball pitchers giving up homers on 12% of their flyballs vs. flyball pitchers giving them up on only 8%. So xFIP counts 10% of flyballs as homers, and that's really the only difference from plain Jane FIP. SIERA uses the pitcher tendency differences and has other improvements that could still make it valuable, but as long as movement works to determine a pitcher's homers allowed instead of groundball ratio and number of flies, xFIP would just be misleading in our environment. A park adjustment on FIP, if it isn't already in the game (I seem to recall that it is, but I'm nowhere near certain), would be more useful.
Edit: Of course, what we see wouldn't have to change all that much, were movement scores suddenly determined by groundball percentage and league HR/fly averages rather than the way it is now. Similar to how contact for hitters used to just be a number, then became a function of BABIP skill in combination with others, which hadn't been in the game before. But IIRC that was a pretty major change for the programmers under the hood.
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Movement is determined in part by groundball percentage as it is. It's not like contact where it shows you the result in the editor, you have to go outside and look at the movement rating on the player profile and it changes with groundball percentage. I've seen NoOne mention in the past that pitch types can affect it to, though I haven't played enough with it to see.
If true then I believe that can align (if done correctly) with what we're learning about pitching, that pitch mix can have a significant effect on GB rate and pitchers have lowered their HRs allowed by throwing less fastballs, as they're hit on the ground the lowest of any pitch type and whiffed the least (other than sinkers).