2016 MLB Draft Guide: Beyond ERA: DIPS, FIP, xFIP & SIERA

ERA, or earned run average (earned runs / (innings x 9)), has long been one of the staples of judging the performance of a hurler. However, just as wins have started to fade from the general consciousness as a true indicator of performance, it’s time we do the same thing with ERA – put it out to pasture. In this article we’ll illuminate some of the calculations that can be done to reflect both a pitcher’s success and failure in a more accurate measure. After all, hasn’t it ever bothered you when you watch a guy pitch and note how good he is, yet when you look up his ERA the mark is 4.35? Let’s explore.

WEAKNESSES OF ERA

Without getting all fancy, a few quick points.

A bad inning or three, especially for relievers, can completely skew a pitcher’s season-long performance if you’re judging by ERA alone.

ERA is based on earned runs. That means the players standing behind the pitcher have a great effect on the outcome of each hurler’s ERA. Are they any good with the leather?

More poignantly, ERA causes a pitcher to be dependent on issues beyond his control. Is that fair to the hurler? Obviously it ain’t.

The bottom line is that ERA is antiquated and comes from a time when our knowledge of the game of baseball was in its infancy. Henry Chadwick is credited with inventing ERA and he didn’t start  following baseball until the 1850’s. He is often thought of as one of the fathers of baseball as he edited the first baseball guide sold to the public, created the box score, the batting average statistic and ERA. He was also the first to record singles, doubles, triples and home runs; the original baseball statistician.

We know more now, have a better understanding of how the game works and how to more accurately judge the performance level of a player. It’s time to replace ERA. To that end we will present a series of measures that do just that – speak more directly to the performance of a pitcher.

*** All leaderboards require a minimum of 140-innings pitched.
 

WHAT IS DIPS?

FORMULA:   ((IP*2.4) + (H*.83) + (HR*11.05) + (BB*2.81) - (SO*1.59) / ((IP*0.71) + (H*.244) + (SO*.097) - (HR*.244))

• This is the original formula. It has been revised multiple times since.

Created by Voros McCracken, DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching) began the analysis of ERA and its shortcomings. It shows that a pitcher’s skill level has little to no bearing on whether or not a batted ball becomes a hit. This means the batting average a pitcher allows on balls put in play is random and the outcome of the batted ball is not in the control of the pitcher no matter how talented he may be. Therefore, measures such as ERA and WHIP, which depend on defense-dependent events (a single, double or triple, a ball put in play that results in an error or a ball put in play resulting in an out of some type), are fairly useless when it comes to predicting the performance of a pitcher. The reason for this is that those measures are tracking randomly occurring events which have nothing to do with a pitcher’s skill level (some subsequent studies do suggest that a pitcher's talent can have some bearing on the outcome of the batted ball, though still much less than one would suspect). The effect of DIPS is basically not to “blame” a pitcher for events out of his control but to focus on the events which are in his control, namely, Defense Independent events such as strikeouts, walks, hit by pitch and home runs. The resulting DIPS totals therefore are a more precise tool which can be used to gauge a pitcher’s overall effectiveness from year to year without all the white noise that clouds ERA.

Counterpoint – portions of DIPS have been disputed, which is why there are further measures listed below that have attempted to take the idea of DIPS to completion.

Sorry Mr. Greinke. You might have led baseball in ERA but DIPS says you were just the 7^th best performer in 2015.

Chris Sale and Carlos Carrasco both finish in the top-10 in DIPS. Their ranks in ERA? Sale was 28^th, Carrasco 39th.

Corey Kluber failed, given expectations entering the 2015 season. Still, his skills were pretty close to those seen in 2014 an DIPS speaks to that with a mark a half run lower than his raw ERA.

Dallas Keuchel won the AL Cy Young but falls a half run below his actual ERA in this measures.

Gio Gonzalez pitched better than we thought. Told ya he did.

The guy with the lowest ERA who finished the lowest on the list? John Lackey was 31^st and he had a 2.77 ERA. His DIPS was 3.54.

The first hurler on the list with an ERA above four was Pineda who game in 22^nd overall. The next guy was his teammate Nathan Eovaldi who came in 29^th (4.20).

Some notables not mentioned (listed with the DIPS ERA).

3.53 – Sonny Gray

3.60 – Yordano Ventura

3.72 – Felix Hernandez

3.83 – Michael Wacha

4.00 – Scott Kazmir

4.12 – Wei-Yin Chen

4.32 – Drew Hutchison (his raw ERA was 5.57)

4.42 – Marco Estrada (his raw ERA was 3.13)

WHAT IS FIP?

FORMULA: FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant
* The constant is generally around 3.20.

A pitching measure that is more accurate at depicting the actual performance of a pitcher than ERA, FIP only takes into account the events which are directly in the control of the hurler (K, BB, HR, HBP). In effect, FIP builds off the work of Voros McCracken in DIPS ERA by again focusing on those events directly in th epitcher’s control versus those which are not, such as (a) how effective are his fielders? (b) where are those players being positioned by coaches etc.

As with DIPS, Sale and Carrasco finished in the top-10 in FIP despite ERA’s over 3.40.

Zack Greinke’s ERA goes up an entire run, eight-tenths higher than his teammate Clayton Kershaw who leads the way in FIP.

Madison Bumgarner nearly matched his ERA exactly in the FIP column.

Gio Gonzalez is even better here than in DIPS.

There is Pineda again with skills that suggest his run was a point to high.

WHAT IS xFIP?

FORMULA: xFIP = ((13*(FB% * League-average HR/FB rate))+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant

A variation of FIP is xFIP which stands for Expected Fielding Independent Pitching. This mark is recorded the same way as FIP with one variation – it normalizes the pitcher’s home run rate to what it should have been. In essence, you take a pitchers fly-ball rate, multiply that by the league HR/FB ratio (generally in the 9-10 percent range), and arrive at a number that is more reflective of what the HR portion of the equation should look like. Here are the xFIP leaders.
 

Sale flies up the board yet again. When we normalize for homers his FIP falls another tenth down to 2.60 in xFIP.

Jake Arrieta, on the other hand, goes in the other direction the deeper we go. His ratio keeps going up and up. In fact, Sale passes Arrieta in xFIP.

Pineda flies up to 9^th. He gets the benefit of having his 21 homers in 160.2 innings normalized a bit, and that helps. Speaking of homers, Masahiro Tanaka is up to 22^nd in xFIP as his FIP is nearly three-quarters of a run higher. Tanaka was battered for 25 homers in 154 innings.

Greinke falls to 17^th as his ERA nearly doubles in xFIP.

David Price also falls precipitously down to 18^th with the same mark as Matt Harvey. Kyle Hendricks, who had an  ERA that was more than a full run above those two stars, vaults up the list to only one-hundredth of a point behind the two bigger names.

WHAT IS SIERA?

FORMULA: SIERA = 6.145 - 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) - 1.858*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/- 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) - 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA)

SIERA, or Skills Interactive Earned Run Average, builds on the ideas of FIP by looking at what the pitcher can control. This measure focuses on walks, strikeouts and ground balls while trying to remove things like ballpark factors, defensive efforts and luck. SIERA realizes that more grounders and more punchouts often equals fewer runs allowed. It is seen as a slightly more accurate take on FIP which speaks more directly to what has already occurred, while it [SIERA] is a bit more predictive of future performance.

Whereas Kershaw’s SIERA is nearly a direct match for his raw ERA, Arrieta sees a huge increase in raw mark, a full point up to 2.75 in SIERA.

Sale, on the other end, drops a full point in SIERA from his raw ERA mark.

Carrasco also surges, up to 4^th on the list with a mark about nine tenths better than his raw mark.

Pineda is a run and a quarter better than his raw ERA. Massive improvement.

Greinke is even worse off in xFIP than FIP.

Ian Kennedy comes in at 3.61 in SIERA versus his raw ERA of 4.28. There’s still some hope with the righty.

Sonny Gray loses more than a full run falling from 2.73 in raw ERA down to a 3.80 SIERA. Might be hard for him to repeat his third place finish in the AL Cy Young race. Scott Kazmir pulled off the same trick going from 3.10 to 4.10. Speaking of that…

TWO MESURES COMPARING CATEGORIES TO ONE ANOTHER

ERA vs FIP

Let’s take a look at pitchers by comparing what their actual ERA was to what their skills suggest their ratio actually should have been. The first table speaks to those pitchers who pitched worse than their ERA suggested.
 

Marco Estrada signed a two-year deal for $26 million to stay with the Jays. He was really impressive last season but realize he pitched more over his head than any qualifying pitcher in the game last season – by more than a point and a quarter when looking at his raw ERA.

Hector Santiago was the second worst on the list. That’s what happens when you allow 29 homers with a 54 percent fly ball ratio.

Greinke, as you’ve seen many times in this piece, had an ERA that was over his head. To be fair, his ERA was microscopic, so even though he’s third on this list his FIP was still two full runs below Santiago’s mark. As much of a difference as Greinke tossed out there, check out the mark of Arrieta. His rate was only half as off as the Dodgers’ star.

Again, study the above list carefully. It strongly suggests that arms like Gray, Tanaka and Michael Wacha shouldn’t be as highly valued as so many of you might think.

This second table speaks to those pitchers who pitched better than their ERA suggested. These are guys you might consider bumping up in your personal rankings a bit. Of course, you should just take the Fantasy Alarm rankings as gospel, but if you just so happen to make your own list…
 

Drew Hutchison has a big arm. Don’t forget about him in the reserve rounds in mixed leagues.

Pineda appears to be a target, but the guy cannot throw 180 innings so I would still exercise caution with the righty. I just don’t trust him either. I know, I probably should, but I don’t. #ScientificMethod

Carrasco… are you sensing a trend? Target him but note, like Pineda, that he has big issues staying healthy.

Jeff Samardzija pitched better than it looked, sort of. Still owns a tremendous arm despite the results last season.

Wade Miley is just a guy, but look for that “guy” to be much more of a league-average type of arm than not.

Jeff Locke may have pitched better than I looked, but no… do not take the plunge.

Jon Lester was strong in his first season with the Cubs but it was even a bit better than it looked.

Collin McHugh is an interesting case. After a rough start he was the same guy we saw in 2014. That’s a pretty solid depth option.

WHAT IS TRIPLE ERA?

FORMULA: (ERA + ERC + DIPS) / 3

Created by yours truly. OK that’s kind of like saying I created a Corvette compared to cars. I didn’t invent the original, I just built on it. Triple ERA is the average of three different ERA measures totaled together and divided by three. Since each metric has its own pluses and minuses, if we add all three figures together we would be able to hopefully minimize the "weaknesses" that each of them possess. With TERA, we are also able to take three ideas and combine them in a way that does not favor any method over the other as they are all weighted equally. It’s simple and it’s obvious, but maybe, just maybe, it will lead to some insight that will help you win in 2016.

Jacob deGrom was almost identical in raw ERA and TERA. Ditto Keuchel. And Harvey. And Gerrit Cole. This is getting boring. #NotReally

Gray still sees his ERA increase. Not much wrong with it going up two tenths though.

Sale rises from 28^th to 14^th.

Carrasco rises from 39^th to 15^th.

Kluber goes from 32 to 16^th.

On the flipside Lackey goes from 10^th in ERA down to 21^st. He’s the lowest ranking person on the list with an ERA in the two’s.

Yordano Ventura is the top man on the list for a fella with an ERA in the four’s. His mark went from 4.08 to 3.80 in TERA.

James Shields falls from in San Diego and he will begin 2016 at the age of 34.

So remember, ERA might be the start of the journey, but if you don’t load up the RV and complete that cross country drive, you’re going to be missing out on the best part of the trip – the destination (unless you like your family in which case the trip might be fun too).