For whatever reason, Liriano has been consistently terrible at stranding runners

It's not "whatever reason". He can't locate the slider out of the stretch. Without the slider he's a mediocre pitcher at best.

I am guessing Liriano ends his career as a reliever who can be brought in at the start of an inning with the bases empty and pulled as soon as they get someone on.

FIP is what the actually pitcher did. ERA is what the pitcher, the team defense, and the team bullpen all did together, as substantially modified by the personal interpretation of not-necessarily-impartial-nor-competent observers.

ERA is like RBI: a pointless dinosaur stat that needs to be quietly buried. Even if people are too set in their ways to adopt FIP, which is a far better measure of pitching performance, they should at least drop ERA for R/9, which is at least an honest stat.

FIP is what the actually pitcher did. ERA is what the pitcher, the team defense, and the team bullpen all did together, as substantially modified by the personal interpretation of not-necessarily-impartial-nor-competent observers.

ERA is like RBI: a pointless dinosaur stat that needs to be quietly buried. Even if people are too set in their ways to adopt FIP, which is a far better measure of pitching performance, they should at least drop ERA for R/9, which is at least an honest stat.

Huge overstatement. FIP has its uses, but it definitely does NOT represent "what the pitcher actually did".

FIP has no idea if the guy is giving up line drives or pop-ups. It has no idea if a pitcher is good at inducing DPs and controlling the running game. It has no idea if the guy can't pitch out of the stretch. It has no idea a guy is a knuckleballer, or someone like Tom Glavine who can suppress BABIP.

The truth is partially contained in a bunch of stats (RA, ERA, FIP, xFIP, etc.) There is no magic pitching stat.

FIP is what the actually pitcher did.

Fip is a theoretical construction, which attempts to pretend that the world is a theoretical place, and what a pitchers performance would be if he had a league average defense behind him, and a universe where unearned runs do not exist, along with a universe where pitchers pitch with the same strategy regardless of situation. It assumes everyone in the majors is a major league quality pitcher, which is a big ass assumption.

The truth is partially contained in a bunch of stats (RA, ERA, FIP, xFIP, etc.) There is no magic pitching stat.

Agreed. ERA+ definitely _does_ measure something very useful, unlike, say, Wins. There's no reason not to look at ERA.

And pitchers with different profiles will strand runners differently.

If this is the problem, why not just have him throw out of a windup with runners on? Sure, you give away some bases, but getting more outs doesn't outweigh that?

Having a runner on first turn into a runner on third after the batter takes two pitches doesn't seem like a good tradeoff.

Fip is a theoretical construction, which attempts to pretend that the world is a theoretical place, and what a pitchers performance would be if he had a league average defense behind him, and a universe where unearned runs do not exist, along with a universe where pitchers pitch with the same strategy regardless of situation. It assumes everyone in the majors is a major league quality pitcher, which is a big ass assumption.

And a league avg. GB%, FB%, pop-up%, LD%.

I'll be waiting anxiously for my commissions. 1% on all of these deals is all I ask.

I'll be waiting anxiously for my commissions. 1% on all of these deals is all I ask.

Maybe you should've hired Scott Boras before publishing.

Maybe you should've hired Scott Boras before publishing.

C'mon, it's the Christmas season! Surely Jon Niese can get in the spirit and donate to his benefactor.

I'll be waiting anxiously for my commissions. 1% on all of these deals is all I ask.

Selling out for pennies on the dollar, my friend. Calculate retroactive royalties, plus damages for all the pain and suffering from seeing your concepts pretzel-twisted by that cadre of vigilante sabermetricans...

...and you'll wind up with a seven-figure nest egg, a signing bonus, plus hot and cold running supermodels. Il sorpasso, mi amici...!!!

I never said FIP was magic or comprehensive or any of the things some of you seem to think that I wrote. I said that FIP is what the pitcher actually did. True statement.

"Fielding Independent Pitching, a measure of all those things for which a pitcher is specifically responsible. The formula is (HR*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP, plus a league-specific factor (usually around 3.2) to round out the number to an equivalent ERA number." -HT

The league-specific factor is just for scaling for those who still have their heads stuck in their ERA's.

FIP is what the actually pitcher did.


Fip is a theoretical construction, which attempts to pretend that the world is a theoretical place, and what a pitchers performance would be if he had a league average defense behind him, and a universe where unearned runs do not exist, along with a universe where pitchers pitch with the same strategy regardless of situation.

"Can I predict ze horze-raze?" asked the German physicist. "Certainly, give me 2 days".

Two days later:
"I have pozitive proof that ze horze-raze can be predicted. Here you are. Azzuming ze horze is spherical, ..."

ERA is still the first stat I look at for pitchers, and I have yet to be convinced that I should do otherwise.

I never said FIP was magic or comprehensive or any of the things some of you seem to think that I wrote. I said that FIP is what the pitcher actually did. True statement.

No. It's some of the stuff the pitcher actually did.

For example, throwing an 86 MPH meatball over the middle of the plate, that gets ripped in the gap for a triple is omitted.

It's not "whatever reason". He can't locate the slider out of the stretch. Without the slider he's a mediocre pitcher at best.

I am guessing Liriano ends his career as a reliever who can be brought in at the start of an inning with the bases empty and pulled as soon as they get someone on.

With the White Sox, he looked scared of allowing a crooked number. If the leadoff man reached, he'd rather nibble and throw 30-40 pitches to get three outs rather than take a lump or two and live to last six innings.

That's not particularly helpful as a starter. The K rate is superficially nice, but a lot of the strikeouts weren't in good faith.

Is there a setting that allows you to ignore any thread in which a specific person has participated?

FIP is what the pitcher actually did.

That's an odd way to look at it. ERA measures what actually happens (RA measures it better). FIP measures what one would expect to happen, given the same inputs. You might as well argue that the Pythagorean W/L measures what a team actually did.

ERA is still the first stat I look at for pitchers, and I have yet to be convinced that I should do otherwise.

Era+ for me with an eye at the number of unearned runs they allowed.

ERA is the last stat anyone should look at for pitchers. It's a pitcher+defense+bullpen, as randomly modified by a scorer.

Two identical pitchers. Pitcher A has a great defense and a solid bullpen behind him. Plays are made, inherited runners don't score. Plus he gets friendly error calls from the scorer. He has a dandy ERA.

His clone Pitcher B plays for a club with a crappy defense and a shoddy bullpen. Fielders don't get to balls, inherited runners score, he get shafted by the scorer. His ERA sucks.

This is a pitching perormance metric? NOT. Two guys who are exactly the same can appear to be miles apart. FIP adjusts for luck, fielding talent, and things a pitcher can't control. ERA doesn't.

You don't like modern stats? Then at least use R/9, which takes SOME of the extraneous nonsense out of ERA.

You don't like modern stats? Then at least use R/9, which takes SOME of the extraneous nonsense out of ERA.

No problem with modern stats around here, no problem with fip, dips or any of that ####, the problem is that there is too many assumptions being made with fip and dips. As mentioned, the initial studies which developed the theories of fip, dips etc, was based upon established major league pitchers. When you start to give the same benefit of the doubt to talent level to every pitcher, you are doing the research a disservice.

On top of that, again, it's been proven many times, even by the developer of Dips(see the guy in post 11) that there are enough exceptions to the rules, that it's a general rule, and not hard and fast definite for everybody for every situation. You are going to have your Javier Vazquez, Liriano's, Maddux, and Glavine like outliers. And those outliers are explainable by scouting, and era, and pretty much by knowing something about the game.

And of course Fip isn't park adjusted, so you need to look at Fip-(which I've yet to see anyone use) I mean if you are going to throw out some random ass stat that isn't completely accepted,(see the idiots that were in love with wpa for about a year before sanity reign in the absurdity) you might as well throw out the best version of the stat. If you aren't using Fip-, then you really shouldn't be quoting fip.

This is a pitching perormance metric? NOT. Two guys who are exactly the same can appear to be miles apart. FIP adjusts for luck, fielding talent, and things a pitcher can't control. ERA doesn't.

Pitchers control a lot more than dips and fip account for. Fip assumes that the distribution of strikeouts, walks and homeruns is 100% random, and the reality is that some pitchers do a better job of timing of those events with runners on base than when they are not on base.

ERA is the last stat anyone should look at for pitchers. It's a pitcher+defense+bullpen, as randomly modified by a scorer.

Do you realize the fit criteria used for FIP?

FIP is considered superior to ERA because it does a better job of predicting ... future ERA.

If ERA is the last stat anyone should look at, why do we want a stat that is good at predicting ERA?

FIP has utility because FIP takes HR and K/BB and gives you a rough translation of those two into runs. That's useful for punters on the web. Any team should be using a more complex model -- I'm pretty sure ZiPS does better than FIP for example.

As to the article ... is this actually any different than before? Isn't giving out contracts based on FIP the same as giving out contracts based on "stuff" and isn't that what teams have almost always done?

2006-8, AJ Burnett had 522 IP, 1 HR/9, 3.3 BB/9 and 9 K/9. He got 5/$82.5 4 years ago. (ERA+ 112)
2010-12, Sanchez had 587 IP, .8 HR/9, 2.8 BB/9 and 8 K/9. He got 5/$80. (ERA+ 109)

This is a victory for FIP?

2006-8, Ollie Perez had 484 IP, 1.2 HR/9, 4.7 BB/9 and 8.5 K/9 (95 ERA+). He got 3/$36 4 years ago.
2010-12, Liriano had 483 IP, .8 HR/9, 4.1 BB/9 and 9 K/9 (89 ERA+). He got 2/$14.

FIP again ruling the day.

2002-4, Brad Radke had 550 IP, 1.1 HR/9, 1.2 BB/9 and 5.3 K/9 (111 ERA+). He got 2/$18 (maybe more, he got hurt)
2010-12, Blanton had 408 IP, 1.3 HR/9, 1.9 BB/9 and 7.4 K/9 (83 ERA+). He got 2/$15 ... 8 years later

Well done FIP lovers!

The best you can say is that teams are getting much better deals on non-elite pitchers than they did in the past.

Snapper 3 wins the thread, no need to continue, which is a shame because cardsfanboy 4 makes my ass hurt.

We know that pitchers have more control over K and BB than they do other things. We also know that they have some control over other things. Any model that gives BABIP the same weight as K and BB is wrong, and any model that gives BABIP zero weight is wrong. My preference would be to weigh xFIP and RA - in a small sample size, xFIP gets more weight, in a large sample size RA gets more weight. This is pretty simple people, stop talking dogmatically.

It assumes everyone in the majors is a major league quality pitcher, which is a big ass assumption.

Sure, FIP might not work for PJ Walters, but Liriano is clearly a major league quality pitcher. At times in his career he's been an absolutely elite major league pitcher. Generally, there are no pitchers with great K and BB rates who also have super high BABIP's and strand rates. The converse is not true as there are many mediocre K and BB pitchers who are good at suppressing BABIP.

ERA is still the first stat I look at for pitchers, and I have yet to be convinced that I should do otherwise.

See JA Happ 2009. Sorry for the triple post.

I RTFA and they use ERA-?. Is this new? If I understand it correctly and lower is better, I think I like it.

Sure, FIP might not work for PJ Walters, but Liriano is clearly a major league quality pitcher

Why? Because he keeps getting put out there and performing worse than Fip predicts, should be an indication that he maybe is not a major league pitcher. I honestly think that at some point in time people have to accept that pitchers who aren't getting results predicted by Fip, may not be the same talent pool that Fip is designed to predict. Sure he was in the past a major league quality pitcher, and maybe hasn't been for several years, He has stuff, but maybe not the ability to pitch at the majors.

I RTFA and they use ERA-?. Is this new? If I understand it correctly and lower is better, I think I like it.

New in that it's probably less than a year old, it is what bb-ref should be using, but we are conditioned to the old way. (yes lower is better...it does a better job of scaling extreme years so that it doesn't look as nearly ridiculous as it had in the past)

ERA- and FIP- and xFIP- were added to Fangraphs some time last season. They are quite nice since they compare the pitcher to league average rather than league average to the pitcher. Similarly wRC+ is nicer than OPS+ because it actually reflects what people erroneously think OPS+ means: a hitter's offensive producton as a percentage above or below league average.

28 are you high? Liriano has a career 96 ERA+ in the AL, with peripherals and stuff far better than that. He's 29 next season. There is zero evidence that he falls outside the pool that FIP is trying to predicting. But this is what I'm talking about with dogmatism.

Note I'm not saying that FIP "works" for Liriano, but if it doesn't it's definitely not because Liriano lacks qualities of a "major league pitcher".

28 are you high? Liriano has a career 96 ERA+ in the AL, with peripherals and stuff far better than that. He's 29 next season. There is zero evidence that he falls outside the pool that FIP is trying to predicting. But this is what I'm talking about with dogmatism, good day to you.

It's not dogmatism, (note, I'm not specifically referring to Liriano, I'm referring to any pitcher, ever) if he consistently is falling below projections, then the reasons could be the projecting system is flawed, random variance, or that the system isn't designed to handle him as a player... 2 of those 3 results is a knock on the system. I don't care which you take, but the odds are that there is something about Liriano that indicates he doesn't perform as well as Dips think he should. I don't believe it's random variance so I'll take either of the other two arguments.

Why would FIP fail for Liriano? Obviously there will be pitchers who have higher ERA's than FIP's, and not all of them are players who don't fit the FIP mold (which I think is a ######## concept anyway, if you can strike out 9 batters per 9 you clearly are a major league pitcher. If you have a career 4.40 ERA, you clearly are a major league pitcher). If that wasn't the case than there would be no point in having FIP, and all the research shows that FIP is more predictive of future ERA than ERA.

It's a useless tautology to say that FIP doesn't work for anyone who has an ERA-FIP discrepancy.

Let's make some bets here. Which 5 pitchers (age 26-32) do you think FIP does not work for?

FWIW, Snapper's no. 16 comment prompted Tango to respond:

Two people who are talking to each other, but don’t want to listen to each other. It’s clear what each side is trying to say.

FIP is only concerned with those things that don’t involve his fielders (though Mike Trout stealing or not stealing HR are on the edge there). It is AGNOSTIC on every other event.

This is no different than OBP only being concerned with whether a batter reached base, and not interested in how far he reached base. So, a walk = HR for purposes of OBP. It is AGNOSTIC as to how far the batter got.

So, why do we have a problem? Well, there is a big gap between a player’s OBP and his overall offensive production. Namely, his HR and extra bases and his baserunning. It’s an obvious gap, so obvious, that we don’t even need to point it out. No one is going to say that “OBP is almost the same as a hitter’s overall offense”.

With pitchers, the gap between a pitcher FIP and his overall defensive production is fairly “small” (with small being defined however one wishes to define it). So, we end up with one side thinking “small” means “non-existant”, and the other side thinking “small” means “still notable”.

FIP is impressive because it only needs 20-35% of a pitcher’s batters faced in order to explain a large portion of his talent.

what people erroneously think OPS+ means: a hitter's offensive producton as a percentage above or below league average.

Doesn't it, though? OPS+ is constructed the way it is because that's how run scoring behaves. OBP and SLG both create runs roughly linearly (within realistic ranges that occur in MLB.) If you record SLG of 10% above average, you knock in 10% more runs. OBP of 10% above average means you're on base 10% more often for your teammates to drive in. If you do both, your spot in the lineup creates 20% more runs than average, and there's your 120 OPS+.

Let's make some bets here. Which 5 pitchers (age 26-32) do you think FIP does not work for?

Haven't done any studying on it, but I'll go with Jeremy Hellickson, Rick Porcello, Jared Weaver, Liriano, Josh Beckett, Bud Norris, Ubaldo Jimenez... didn't look at ages so not sure who is within the range you are talking about.

Of course the age range listed is prime for people who get it, if someone is 26 years old and currently isn't a major league ready pitcher, but is pitching in the majors, he'll probably have the ability but maybe not the makeup yet. That is something that is learned or you won't be in the league for long. And then you have the other factor, veteran's who lose their stuff, but still get chances at the major league level because of who they were.

Why would FIP fail for Liriano?

Not actually saying it doesn't work for Liriano specifically, but if it doesn't, it could be because he isn't a major league pitcher in the head. Dips was based upon the entire established pool of starting pitchers in the majors, and there is (usually) an acknowledged quality difference between AAA pitching and MLB pitching. History is littered with guys who had the stuff, but couldn't get it to translate at the major league level, or in cases of guys like Javier Vazquez or Josh Beckett, they are talented enough, that even underperforming expectations they get major league results.

If that wasn't the case than there would be no point in having FIP, and all the research shows that FIP is more predictive of future ERA than ERA.

And for the most part that is true, but there has always been exceptions, your knuckleballers, your Greg Maddux's etc. If there is a way to overperform dips consistently, then isn't it reasonable to expect people to underperform consistently?

It's a useless tautology to say that FIP doesn't work for anyone who has an ERA-FIP discrepancy.

And I hope you don't think I'm saying that, because I'm not.

I'm just trying to think of guys who are in their prime already so we wouldn't get any aging effects. A lot of these guys (Weaver, Porcello and Hellickson) play on teams with extreme defensive talent, so instead of using FIP and ERA, I'll use fWAR and bWAR per 600 BF because bWAR adjust for team defense. The number we'll compare to is 2013 bWAR/600 BF.

Hellickson - career 2.5 bWAR/600, 1.0 fWAR/600. Over/under - 1.7

Porcello - career .7 bWAR/600, 1.9 fWAR/600. Over/under - 1.3

Weaver - career 3.1 bWAR/600, 3.0 fWAR/600. There's no disagreement here, so we'll just skip him.

Liriano - career 1.4 bWAR/600, 2.7 fWAR/600. Over/under - 2.0

Beckett - career 2.4 bWAR/600, 3.0 fWAR/600. Over/under - 2.7. I'm not gonna take this bet because Beckett doesn't have a large differential and he'll be 33 next year which will depress his numbers. On the other hand he's in the NL which will counterbalance that. OK fine I'll take it ;)

Norris - career .4 bWAR/600, 1.3 fWAR/600. Over/under - .9

Ubaldo - career 2.1 bWAR/600, 2.8 fWAR/600. This is a pretty weird one because Ubaldo who had that one year where he hugely outperformed his peripherals for most of the year, but has actually slightly underperformed his peripherals over his career. Anyway I'm not gonna take this bet because he's lost so much velocity in recent years.

So we have Norris, Liriano, Beckett, Hellickson and Porcello. I'll try to remember to revisit this in a year.

J.R. Wolf has to be some regular poster who is just ####### with us. No one is that aggressivly stupid.

Ubaldo - career 2.1 bWAR/600, 2.8 fWAR/600. This is a pretty weird one because Ubaldo who had that one year where he hugely outperformed his peripherals for most of the year, but has actually slightly underperformed his peripherals over his career. Anyway I'm not gonna take this bet because he's lost so much velocity in recent years.

He overperformed I think because of Coors field. I think he is the weird guy who performs better because of the high run environment of coors field. As to Beckett.... He's the guy who I look at as the guy who does poorly 3 out of 4 years, and things go right in the fourth year, enough that his spread isn't that big of a deal, but if we are talking about betting, I would imagine the odds would be stacked in him underperforming again.

Robert: "Aggressively stupid" is using a dinosaur stat which includes defense quality, bullpen quality, luck, and subjective judgment as a pitching quality metric.

Or at least use R/9. ERA is a garbage stat.

I'm sorry but the question is very much whether Liriano is a ML quality pitcher.

2012 ERA+ 78
2011 ERA+ 80
2009 ERA+ 76

2009-12 ERA+ 86

It is the very matter under debate. Those are terrible, terrible results.

For pitchers with at least 500 IP from 2009-12, Liriano has the 8th worst ERA+ (out of only 100 eligible). The ones worse than him are:

Hochevar who we laugh about
Volstad who we scorn
Roberto Hernandez who is not the reliever
Kevin Correia who was not good enough for the Pirates
Nick Blackburn who is so uninteresting I have nothing to say
Derek Lowe who is no longer in baseball
Livan who threw 67 innings of terrible relief in 2012 and is probably done

Ahh, but that's still a select group of pitchers given there are only 100 of them. OK, let's look at the 261 pitchers who have made at least 20 starts from 2009-12. He has the 71st worst ERA+ of this group. He's in there with Chris Narveson, Brad Penny, Micah Owings and Jamie Moyer. Even Jerome Williams has managed an 87.

Drop it to 5 starts and he's 150th out of 407. And this is how I discover that Kip Wells pitched in the majors in 2012. He appears to be worse than Liriano.

What about guys with high K rates? OK, let's go back to the 20+ starts 2009-12 list. Of 55 pitchers, he has the 6th worst ERA+. Look who he's around though ...

Manny Parra, Esmil Rogers, Chad Gaudin, Edinson Volquez, Felipe Paulino, Bud Norris, Felix Dubront, Rich Harden, Jonathan Sanchez, Carlos Villanueva, Jeff Samardzija, Marco Estrada, Erik Bedard.

Do you want your team to go out and sign most of those guys to 2/$14?

But we want to predict so let's look at that list for the years 2007-10 and see who did well in 2011-12.

Felipe Paulino -- nope
BH Kim -- nope
Rick van der Hurk -- nope
Manny Parra -- nope
Ollie Perez -- nope
Gio Gonzalez -- hooray! Also 22-24, not 25-28
Rob Tejeda -- nope
Francisco Liriano -- nope
Carlos Villanueva -- OK as a swingman
Jorge de la Rosa -- nope
Ricky Nolasco -- nope
Rich Hill -- nope
Scott Kazmir -- nope
Jonathan Sanchez -- oh god no!

Some of those guys were hurt but given Liriano's injury history and lack of durability, I'm not ruling that out for him. Anyway, there's not one of those guys you'd want to pay 2/$14. Nolasco has his uses in that he's durable and an 85ish ERA+. Gio (much younger) aside, the best pitcher (i.e. the one with the best results 2011-12) on this list is Villanueva and he had better results 2007-10 than Liriano did 2009-12. Rumor puts that contract at 2/$10. That Liriano himself is on this list, at a 95 ERA+, and proceeded to have a lousy ERA in 2011-12 should definitely give you cause for concern. And 2010 was an excellent year for Liriano -- low BB and HR rate, he looked like he might be back to the guy we were all so excited about.

I hope everyone here understands the point of gambling on a guy with a high K-rate. But that's a 1/$4 contract with incentives or maybe even 1/$7 with an option.

Robert: "Aggressively stupid" is using a dinosaur stat which includes defense quality, bullpen quality, luck, and subjective judgment as a pitching quality metric.

Yes, yes, we get it. You are a buffoon. But are you are poser buffoon or the genuine article?

Walt, Liriano gave up a total of 10 unearned runs over those 4 years. League average ER is .92 of ER + UER IIRC, so you'd have expected Liriano to give up 30 unearned runs. That's a big difference and turns him from a near replacement level pitcher to somewhere close to league average.

The first list is useless because those guys were also terrible FIP pitchers. If Liriano had a terrible FIP as well, there would be no discussion. Furthermore, none of those guys put up anything like Liriano's 2010 except for Lowe and Livan who were old as ####.

I'm also not sure what that last list is supposed to convey. Felipe Paulino was injured, otherwise he was good. BH Kim retired in 2007 and ha a 5.76 FIP his last year. Rick Vanderhurk pitched a total of 180 innings in the majors over his career. Manny Parra I'll give you (finally). Ollie Perez put up terrible DIPS numbers in addition to terrible ERA's in 07-10, he's not comparable to Liriano. Tejeda went to relief. Jorge De La Rosa's been fine considering his home ballpark. Ricky Nolasco is a good comp for Liriano, he's consistently had higher ERA's than FIP's. Rich Hill's been out of baseball for several years, Kazmir got injured, Sanchez has a ERA lower than his FIP the past 4 years and has been fine over that span (he only pitched 60 innings last year and his DIPS numbers blew up as well).

Either way I have no idea how you generated those comps, since half of them haven't pitched at all in recent years. What you're looking for is a guy with a 4.00 FIP and a 4.80 ERA. From 2007-2010, setting the limit to 400 innings, you get Jason Hammel, Ricky Nolasco and that's pretty much it.

I'll take bets on Liriano all day. Over under 4 ERA next year. I agree that they shouldn't have signed him to 2/14, but that's only because I can't imagaine anyone else would offer that to him.

ERA- and FIP- and xFIP- were added to Fangraphs some time last season. They are quite nice since they compare the pitcher to league average rather than league average to the pitcher. Similarly wRC+ is nicer than OPS+ because it actually reflects what people erroneously think OPS+ means: a hitter's offensive producton as a percentage above or below league average.

Gracias, Dan. I haven't really been following them too much lately, due to time constraints. I rely on BTF to separate the wheat from the chaff for me.

As to the article ... is this actually any different than before? Isn't giving out contracts based on FIP the same as giving out contracts based on "stuff" and isn't that what teams have almost always done?

This was my initial take-away too, although it would be pretty interesting if FIP directly correlated with scouting grades on pitcher's stuff.

FWIW, Snapper's no. 16 comment prompted Tango to respond:

Thought that was a pretty innocuous comment; guess I just have a knack for irritating the true believers.

Quite frankly, I don't know why anyone for rely on FIP anymore. If you want an ERA estimator, use ZiPs or Cairo, or Oliver, or any of the other ones. They're much better. If you want to eyeball stats in-season, look at the components on their own (K/9, BB/9, etc.).

Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone!

Or at least use R/9. ERA is a garbage stat.

How did you miss the part where they mentioned that fip is best for predicting future ERA? If ERA is a garbage stat, why would anyone care if you could predict it? Era is a great stat, yes there is flaws and RA fixes a large portion of that, but there is no reason to go to complementary stats like whip, k%(you should be shot if you use k/9 instead of k%) etc while ignoring era/era+.

For some reason, some people think that Maddux bucks the FIP trend. The reality is that Maddux’s career ERA is 76% of the league average, and his FIP is 77% of the league average.

From Tango's response. I know he is (at least I hope he is) being intentionally inaccurate to see if anyone bothers to check up on him.

Maddux from 1992-1998 a 7 year peak, he outperformed fip by a fairly good margin. Over his career he doesn't, but 800 innings at the tail end of his career where he probably wasn't the same pitcher, and another 180 ip in his first season and a half explains away pretty much all of that. If you look from 1988-2002 you have a guy who is consistently out performing his fip, and often times by a good amount.