2019 MLB Draft Guide: Beyond ERA: FIP, xFIP & SIERA

As we enter 2019, the game of baseball is ever evolving. Gone are the days where you can look at the back of a player’s baseball card and see he had a good year and take it for face value. In today’s day of information and analytics we can now see that a player had a good year and begin to identify why that player was so successful or in some cases not successful at all. When it comes to pitching the easy stats to look at are ERA (earned run average), WHIP, (walks + hits/ innings pitched) wins, losses, strikeouts and walks but what if I told you there is more to it than that. What if there were other stats that could help you identify whether a pitcher was getting lucky or rather unlucky while on the mound and that those stats can and should be used when preparing for your upcoming fantasy baseball draft? Well then let me introduce you to the life beyond ERA and into the sabermetric world of FIP (Fielding Independent pitching), xFIP (Expected Fielding Independent Pitching) and SIERA (skill-interactive ERA).

FIP- Fielding Independent Pitching

Sabermetrics have completely taken over the way we look at statistics in baseball and they have become ever so important in the world of fantasy baseball as well. The sabermetric stat FIP is defined as a measurement of a pitcher’s ERA over a period of time if that player was to experience the league average in BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play). This number ignores the role of defense and by using the league averages BABIP it diminishes any good or bad batted ball luck the pitcher may have had. Instead it focuses on the walks, strikeouts, hit batters and home runs that the pitcher may record while in the game. Fantasy owners can often look at a pitchers ERA and compare it to their FIP and see if any sort of correction, good or bad, will be coming their way. Should you find that a pitcher’s ERA is much lower than their FIP it is safe to assume they are getting relatively lucky when it comes to run prevention, whether it be solid defense behind them or favorable batted ball luck.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that last year’s leader in FIP was Jacob deGrom as the NL Cy Young winner finished with a ridiculous 1.99 FIP to match his league leading 1.70 ERA. Among the top five it appears that Patrick Corbin had some tough luck as his 2.47 FIP was good for fourth in baseball but his 3.15 ERA put him 15^th among qualified starters. Now of course FIP is not the end all be all when trying to determine the upside of a starting pitcher, but when it comes to fantasy baseball this is one of my favorite stats to look at. It helps me identify some potential bargains on draft day. Pitchers who last season got rather unlucky but if the law of averages ends up on their side in 2018 they could certainly contribute to a fantasy staff. A pitcher that I think could be in for a better season based off his FIP is Nick Pivetta .

The numbers are trending in the right direction for Pivetta who improved in year two, posting a 4.77 ERA over 32 starts, down from his 6.02 ERA as a rookie. The one thing I like about Pivetta is of course the peripheral stats here. In both years his FIP was drastically lower than his ERA. Among qualified starters in 2018 Pivetta’s .326 BABIP was the worst in baseball.  A league average BABIP would have seen Pivetta finish with an ERA around 3.80 which would have been more than serviceable when paired with his 10.3 K/9 and decent 2.8 BB/9. The strikeouts are no fluke and if he keeps on improving with some better batted ball luck then in 2019 we could be seeing a breakout season from the Phillies starter. Right now in 12-team standard league formats Pivetta has a 13/14^th round ADP. Talk about a bargain if he takes another step forward.

xFIP- Expected Fielding Independent Pitching

So you just had your introduction to FIP so now let’s get to xFIP shall we? The main difference with xFIP compared to FIP is that xFIP considers the league average home run to flyball ratio and applies that. As we said before FIP likes to normalize BABIP well, xFIP likes to take the pitchers HR/FB ratio and standardize it towards the league average of 10%. In this instance if a pitcher had a HR/FB ratio at less than 10% they were likely on the luckier side of the coin than those who had a HR/FB ratio greater than 10%.

In 2018 no pitcher had worse luck when it came to the home run ball than the Rockies Jon Gray  as he gave up home runs on 18.1% of the flyballs he allowed. Now sure, playing your home games in Coors Field will certainly do that to you, but assuming the league average is 10%, then we are seeing Gray allow a home run at nearly double the rate per fly ball. Now there were some other issues with Gray that contributed to his tough season such as a .322 BABIP against which ranked 3rd worst among qualified starters, but he was always considered a nice buy low target during the year because of his impressive 3.47xFIP which would indicate that if he just gave up the league average amount of home runs we would be looking at a pitcher with a 9.6 K/9 and a reasonable 3.47 ERA. Those numbers all have the making of a regular contributor to a fantasy rotation. Unfortunately, he just never figured it out and though he made 31 starts he would finish the year with a 5.12 ERA. Another starter who just had horrible luck in 2018 was Dylan Bundy .  Bundy had the third best run differential between his ERA and xFIP among qualified starters. The issue with Bundy in 2018 was the home run ball. He allowed 2.15 HR/9 on the season and had a 17.8% HR/FB ratio. Batters also held a .316 BABIP off Bundy which all contributed to his 5.45 ERA and his ugly 5.17 FIP. His xFIP did show that there was a better pitcher taking the mound if he could have just limited the long ball, but that just never happened.  Maybe in 2019 we see Bundy take the next step and can pair some better batted ball luck with his solid 9.7 K/9 that he posted last year for the Orioles.

On the flip side of Gray was everybody’s favorite weekly sell candidate Trevor Williams of the Pirates. Williams had just horrible peripheral stats with just a lowly 6.64 K/9 and a 2.90 BB/9 yet he somehow managed to skirt danger. He ranked 8^th among qualified starters with a .261 BABIP and thanks to his impressive 8% HR/FB rate and his ability to strand runners on base to limit the damage when they do get on base. Despite the peripheral numbers suggesting he should have been among the one of the leagues most mediocre starters, Williams finished 2018 with a 14-10 record, 3.11 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP.

Now FIP and xFIP are certainly great indicators when it comes to identifying starting pitching but there is one more stat worth looking into and that is SIERA…

SIERA- Skill-Interactive ERA

While not as popular as the other two, SIERA may actually be the most important ERA predictive stats because, as it says in the name, it measures the pitcher’s overall skill. To quote the SIERA article on FanGraphs, “SIERA attempts to answer the question: what is the underlying skill level of this pitcher? How well did they actually pitch over the past year? Should their ERA have been higher, lower, or was it about right?” 

The top leaders in SIERA should be no shock to anybody as they were among the top pitchers in baseball this season. Two pitchers that I continue to go back to who didn’t rank among the top five but instead 13^th and 17^th respectively were Nick Pivetta and Jon Gray . Now sure, they weren’t the only two pitchers with strong SIERA’s that got unlucky last season but they are two pitchers I am targeting in the later rounds of my drafts.  Pivetta posted a 3.51 SIERA while Gray posted a 3.68 SIERA. Both numbers much lower than their ERA’s and show the type of pitcher they could have been in 2019 with better luck. The pitcher with the worst SIERA in 2018 was the White Sox starter Lucas Giolito . In fact, the three worst SIERA marks in baseball during the 2018 season among qualified starters were all on the White Sox with James Shields and Reynaldo López finishing behind him in the standings. Lopez for me was really the worst of the bunch because he finished with a misleading 3.91 ERA thanks to his .231 BABIP against. Lopez had a horrible 4.63 FIP, 5.22 xFIP and 4.92 SIERA.

There are plenty more sabermetric stats worth looking at when trying to identify quality starting pitchers but hopefully you now have a better understand of how to apply FIP, xFIP and SIERA as you begin to prepare for your fantasy draft. It’s worth stressing however, that these statistics should be used all season long. If you find yourself in need of starting pitching find somebody with a poor ERA but a solid FIP. xFIP or SIERA as that can create a nice buy low opportunity. A perfect example of this from last season would be German Marquez of the Rockies. During the first half of the season Marquez was getting hammered at home, Coors Field does that to people, and finished with a first half ERA of 4.81 but a 3.82 xFIP. In the second half Marquez flipped a switch and was one of the best pitchers in baseball, posting an ERA of 2.61 with a FIP and xFIP of 2.25 and 2.30 respectively.  Marquez also posted a ridiculous 12.0 K/9 and a 1.94 BB/9 in the second half after posting a 9.3 K/9 and a 3.23 BB/9 during the first half.  This year Marquez is going around the 6^th round of 12-team standard leagues, right around where Aaron Nola was going heading into the 2018 season after his huge 2017 second half and we all saw how Nola turned out. I think Marquez is the real deal and I will be looking to grab him in drafts this season.