I’m skeptical. What are the actual results that prove the assertion? It seems to me that all of this misses the forest for the trees.

You could start with the fact that FIP is a better predictor of ERA than (past) ERA itself is. In other words, these component statistics have less year-to-year noise than ERA, which is saddled by dependence on luck/defense/opposition.

Of course there’s a difference between a line drive out and fly ball out. WHIP and ERA don’t claim otherwise.

Actually, WHIP and ERA do claim otherwise. They don’t distinguish between types of outs at all. For example, a pitcher who gets 3 strikeouts in an inning and a pitcher who induces 3 lineouts in an inning both have a WHIP of zero for that inning. The types of outs make no difference to the calculation of WHIP (or ERA).

They remain the most useful measure of trends and results across an entire season played out in all kinds of weather and with usable splits.

This is an assertion that you’ll need to provide some supporting evidence for.
You should note that nobody refutes the idea that ERA and WHIP provide a picture of what has occurred. The issue is that what has occurred is coloured by the actions of the defense and by the quality of the opposing batters. In the context of evaluating pitchers, it makes sense to try to remove the influences of the defense/opposition, and that’s what the component statistics do.

I’ll bet that pitchers with a danger-zone high percentage of line drives and fly balls have high ERAs and high WHIPs, too.

Sure, and you can print out a document with an 80s-style dot matrix printer. But the picture is so much clearer if you use a modern printer.

Those two numbers take less labor to derive, though

There are several links to the Hardball Times in the post and comments. It’s not exactly a lot of labour to look up the numbers. And if you want to calculate them yourself from the raw numbers, it isn’t hard either: BB% = (# walks)/(# batters faced), and so on.

and I’ll stick with them until someone provides real data that shows me they don’t work.

The Jarrod Washburn example in the post is a good example of how ERA can break down (high strand rate in this case) but unfortunately I can’t find anything which shows the poor year-to-year correlation of ERA. Anyone?

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For FIP, you adjust the constant to reflect the league. Since 1994, it’s been around 3.20. Pre-1994, it’s been 3.00. FIP is a quick equation, and therefore, try to keep it as simple as possible.

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“Why? Because a hit-by-pitch correlates pretty well with “struggling pitcher”, and so more struggles are likely to follow.”

This part is not true. The fact is that a walk is given out more with 1b open, or 2 outs, than otherwise. That is, a walk is more non-random than a hit batter. If you look at each of the 24 base/out states (and given a large enough sample), the run values of the walk and HBP will be virtually the same, for each state. But, since the frequency of each state will be much different, this will account for the difference between a walk and a hit batter.

But there aren’t many examples like Glavine. So, I’m going to say its possible, but it’s not something we’d expect to see in a pitcher.

[First time posting, so please be gentle if I inadvertently violate local etiquette.]

I was wondering if “damage control” is a real pitching skill, whether it has been systematically assessed, and if it is comprehensibly explainable by the factors you’ve discussed. I assume that strikeouts and ground balls are good outcomes for a pitcher in trouble, but it seems to me that some pitchers are more than just lucky at getting these when most important. For years I’ve heard M’s broadcasters say that certain pitchers are “good at damage control” while others “can’t stop the bleeding.” Is the ability to “minimize the damage” a real pitching skill that carries over from season to season, or upon close examination does it regress to the mean?

I’d think such a skill would be somehow evident in how the runs scored in scoring innings were distributed (fraction of runs scored in one run innings, fraction of runs scored in two run innings, etc.). I’d also guess that pitchers would get better at this as they matured, but would gradually regress as they lost their “stuff”. They’d learn what pitch to throw with experience and be able to make it, but eventually be unable to make quality pitches on demand.

Obviously, I know my guesses don’t constitute data, but I don’t have any idea how to assess this myself. I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter.

Since this is my first time posting, I’d like to thank you for the many hours of enjoyment I’ve had at this site, and for helping me understand the game I love so much better.