Evaluating Pitchers

[battists]

I am 1000% certain that this has been asked and answered 50 times, but my search foo stinks today.

In the world of all these new statistics, how do you guys analyze a pticher’s performance?

What are your go-to stats, and what are “good” or “bad” numbers for those stats?


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[Shadow4u]

Not sure I have ever looked at one stat. But aside from the mental aspects which are important as are the pitching coaches - what is his BABIP over his career. Where did he pitch before and how was the defense ? Also - what are his runners per nine innings ... If his pitch qualities do not jive with the overall rating - I take a pass on them. For me - I like groundball pitchers who are not prone to the long ball. That should give you something to look at and will provide you a top 5 pitching staff - -

[22tbrads22]

in real life I would say to look at stats like FIP, xFIP, Sierra, as well as "older" stats like ERA and see how they compare. if a pitcher has a low ERA take Jon Lester this year for example who is in the mid 2's ERA but has an extremely high FIP and Xfip which suggests that he has gotten very lucky so far this season with a lot of lineouts deep flyballs etc. and one can expect there to be a bit of regression in his ERA and game results. FIP (fielding independent pitching) takes all of the fielding away and just looks soley at how the pitcher has pitched.

[battists]

Originally Posted by Shadow4u

Not sure I have ever looked at one stat. But aside from the mental aspects which are important as are the pitching coaches - what is his BABIP over his career. Where did he pitch before and how was the defense ? Also - what are his runners per nine innings ... If his pitch qualities do not jive with the overall rating - I take a pass on them. For me - I like groundball pitchers who are not prone to the long ball. That should give you something to look at and will provide you a top 5 pitching staff - -

Thanks! But for example, what is a “good” BABIP or runners per 9?


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[battists]

Originally Posted by 22tbrads22

in real life I would say to look at stats like FIP, xFIP, Sierra, as well as "older" stats like ERA and see how they compare. if a pitcher has a low ERA take Jon Lester this year for example who is in the mid 2's ERA but has an extremely high FIP and Xfip which suggests that he has gotten very lucky so far this season with a lot of lineouts deep flyballs etc. and one can expect there to be a bit of regression in his ERA and game results. FIP (fielding independent pitching) takes all of the fielding away and just looks soley at how the pitcher has pitched.

Thanks! I get FIP, but what is xFIP? And Sierra?


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[22tbrads22]

XFip is a variation of FIP that takes into account the homerun a little more. it more or less takes into account how lucky they were given there fly ball to homerun ratio. and Sierra is probably my favorite right now as it is a bit new it is a more in depth. Both Fip and XFIP focus mostly on the "three true outcomes." Strike outs, walks, and homeruns". Sierra works in other results that can also improve or decrease a pitchers success.

[22tbrads22]

If you are interested in these stats there are many books you can read starting with the Bill James handbook that comes out every year. that is what I started reading at about 15 and really opened my eyes and made me look at player in a completely different way. also going on Fangraphs and looking at there definitions of stats will help you a lot more than I can.

[ederemer]

As others have said, FIP and BABIP are useful to look at as they can help explain how the defense performed behind the pitcher. They also can help to provide some context to the offensive environment of the league the pitcher is in. For example, pitcher's in the Pacific Coast League are likely going to have higher ERA's than say the International League, since the ballparks are more conducive to offensive output. FIP and BABIP can help to somewhat explain that.


I also like to look at a pitcher's K% and BB%

[yawgmoth]

go to ones are FIP, BABIP, K rate and BB rate. Others have their purposes but for getting an idea of how a pitcher is doing/going to do those are the staples.

[battists]

What are good/bad k and bb rates?


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[NoOne]

bb/9
hr/9
whip
batters againsts slash
BABIP*

including any other rates of fundamental and basic stuff

if those are low relative to league baseline, it's a good pitcher. they each tell you something fairly fundamental about the pitcher.

my teams are usually pretty consistent, so era tells me a lot too. i know what an elite ace ERA is on my team. i know what an elite closer ERA is on my team. i don't typically look at the ERA of players on other teams though. regardless, it will have a fairly strong correlation to good pitchers. if you have ~better defenses on average, expect pitcers to have a bit lower ERA on your team, or vice versa. (relative to team defense they are coming from, of course.)

*babip is a bit different. a pitcher can have an average babip against or a bit worse babip against and it won't be consequential. it just can't be wretched. anywhere near ~average is fine. (.300ish and lower in mlb-like leagues -- a bit over? no biggie if all the other numbers look good)

i also use babip to assess the amount of luck from year to year (a good portion of luck, anyway). it's almost useless for a younger vet RP. it takes numerous years for an SP to have an accurate career babip average -- and that assumes no TCR or changes that affect babip against during that time..... so, it's quite difficult to use with RP's except in a very general way with a large range of error.

the fancy stuff like fip and ops+ and blah blah... rely on human perception and understanding on at least a portion of how these values are calculated. So, there are inevitably flaws in how they are setup or they'd have a stronger correlation than they do. nothing more needs to be said about them. the very math that supports them shows that they aren't anywhere near perfect. (probably shoudn't have included ops+ for some of that stuff, but still a 'summary' stat)

i do like ops+, because it normalizes to league. in RL i have severe doubts about normalizing for parks and other factors over time. in ootp video game, these things can be 'perfectly true', so to speak.

either way, i still like to look at the individual parts as opposed to a summary. when you know the individual parts you know what you can do to help... e.g. lots of flyball pitchers? big park, good OF defense is 'better' etc...

[battists]

How do you figure out, say, the league baseline for k or bb %?


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[NoOne]

Originally Posted by battists

How do you figure out, say, the league baseline for k or bb %?


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league settings -> Stats and AI page from your league totals. what you can't directly derive from that, you can get from historical data of league -- once it exists and while using ~same settings.

most you can get right from the AB / BB / babip et al. league totals from the settings page.

i don't worry about being 100% precise when it isn't important.. e.g. i'm just dividing hr by 162g and not worring about the leftover innings etc... those few decimals won't change any decision, and if it does it's a flip of the coin anyway.

edit: assumes LT and LTMs jive together or you need league historical data and a spreadsheet. this is a benefit of how i start a league. i callibrate the LTMs with more a long-term simulation or 2 (or 3+). auto-calculating will accomplish nearly the same thing, but won't quite be in the middle relative to all possible talent distributions for the league on any single rating.

i have a spreadsheet in forums that takes a 2subleague league and sums them together per year and helps suggest new ltm relative to LT used. google ootp my name and ltm spreadsheet if you want it.. should find it from that. you don't need to use the LTM portion, but it will quickly sum all the stats and average them out for you from any 2 sub-league exported stats. if you know how to expand a spreadsheet table, it can handle any # of years. you'd have to make a slight edit if only 1 sub-league or >2.

[jimmysthebestcop]

Also consult fangraphs glossary they define all the terms and have charts. I usually leave it open when I'm starting a new universe.

[Whoofe]

nothing drives me battier than a pitcher that gives up a lotta walks

so why don't I trade for guys who have high control at the expense of other ratings? *shakes head* I am addicted to "stuff"

[battists]

Originally Posted by Whoofe

nothing drives me battier than a pitcher that gives up a lotta walks

so why don't I trade for guys who have high control at the expense of other ratings? *shakes head* I am addicted to "stuff"

Lol. Let’s face it, a 15k game is sexy.


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[Juggernt]

Originally Posted by Whoofe

nothing drives me battier than a pitcher that gives up a lotta walks

so why don't I trade for guys who have high control at the expense of other ratings? *shakes head* I am addicted to "stuff"

Yeah, me too. When I see Stuff in the blue, I somehow forget the CON in the red. I think with a good enough development program, I can change him

[battists]

Originally Posted by Juggernt

Yeah, me too. When I see Stuff in the blue, I somehow forget the CON in the red. I think with a good enough development program, I can change him

I actually submitted a new feature request. I really wish we could customize what skills our players are focused on improving. That would so cool. So you could focus on learning a new pitch, or position, or batting against lefties or whatever.


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[jimmysthebestcop]

I really hope OOTP gets ERA-, xFIP-, and SIERA

[NCBeachBum]

Originally Posted by jimmysthebestcop

I really hope OOTP gets ERA-, xFIP-, and SIERA

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.