Outside the box: Advance stat leads to pitcher success

Dalton Mack | HighHeatStats.com









Each week HighHeatStats.com will focus on one advanced statistic. This week: fielding independent pitching.

Often, fans are content to look at a pitcher's win-loss record and ERA to gauge his success at a given point in the season. These numbers often are misleading, as much of what goes into a pitcher's ERA is defense-assisted.

Fielding independent pitching (FIP) is a metric that attempts to take the fielders out of the equation, using only strikeouts, walks, home runs allowed and innings pitched to establish a number that reads much like ERA. The statistic was developed some years ago by Tom Tango and is actively tracked on FanGraphs.com.

For example, the Kansas City Royals' Jeremy Guthrie has five wins and no losses, with a 2.28 ERA, by all means a phenomenal line. That being said, he infrequently records strikeouts and allows well over one home run per nine innings, earning him a 4.58 FIP. A considerable amount of luck is clearly at play, and Guthrie's ERA is unlikely sustainable.

On the other side of the equation, entering his most recent start the Chicago Cubs' Edwin Jackson had been dealt a pretty raw hand, with stellar peripherals (9.2 strikeouts and 0.47 home runs per nine innings) but a 6.39 ERA. He also held the largest disparity between ERA and FIP, minus 3.21 runs.

FIP is a very useful tool in its predictive power, and as such we can predict Guthrie will fall back to earth and Jackson will record an acceptable, if not exceptional, season.

In a typical career, a pitcher's ERA and FIP tend to even out, so a discrepancy of more than 0.2 runs is quite rare. But Hall of Famer Jim Palmer managed a pristine 2.82 ERA despite a FIP hovering around 3.50, owing in large part to a pedestrian strikeout rate.

By Dalton Mack for HighHeatStats.com, an affiliate of USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties