ERA or opposing BA?

[Yankeebiscuitfan]

I have tried to figure out what is the best stat to see how good a pitcher is: ERA or his opponents batting average.

So far I can't figure out.

Can you help?

Thanks.

[Joltin' Joe]

ERA or his opponents batting average.


"BA/OBP/SA Against" does paint a much better picture than ERA.

[Jake Patterson]

I have tried to figure out what is the best stat to see how good a pitcher is: ERA or his opponents batting average.

So far I can't figure out.

Can you help?

Thanks.

Go to the Sabermetrics guys and ask. They have a bunch of different ways to analyze pitchers. I believe 'run shares' are big.

[scorekeeper]

I have tried to figure out what is the best stat to see how good a pitcher is: ERA or his opponents batting average.

Which stat is the best always depends on what the person looking feels is the most important thing. Between those two stats, which do you think is the most important, and why did you boil it down to those two?

It also depends what level you’re talking about. FI, ERA is much more meaningful the higher the level, because the defenses and the scorekeeping are much better.

Personally, I’ve become a pretty big fan of Bases per Out in the last couple of years. One reason for that is, it’s a metric that can be applied to both pitchers and hitters, and is extremely simple to compute, even for most teams who only keep minimal stats.

See http://www.basesperout.com/

[BallCoach06]

I would go with the following sabermetric stats:

K/9
BB/9
K/BB
HR/9

These stats are all things the pitcher controls and does not depend on the defense put behind them.

[virg]

In self-evaluating either pitching or hitting at amateur level, the only useful answer would be the brutally honest one: what did I do against the best around? Against the top tier of pitchers or hitters, omitting the weak and incompetent. In pitching, against the top of the order usually. Hitting, consistently hitting or at least locking horns with the best: getting the hit or two in 1, 2, 3, 4-hitters. Design your own standard, monitor accordingly, revise upward with improvement.

Easy competition is practice for the tough ones. A home run in a laugher is only that and not the hot streak before the slump (against real pitching). Being honest with yourself is all that works.

[Chris O'Leary]

I have tried to figure out what is the best stat to see how good a pitcher is: ERA or his opponents batting average.

Look into DIPS. Defense Independent Pitching Statistics.

Of ERA and OBA, I prefer OBA because it is less defense-dependent.

[scorekeeper]

I would go with the following sabermetric stats:

K/9
BB/9
K/BB
HR/9

These stats are all things the pitcher controls and does not depend on the defense put behind them.


Gotta be careful 06, we don’t know if YBF is talking about a 6 inning, 7 inning, or 9 inning level of ball. But even so, I’m assuming you’re saying those numbers per game are what should be considered.

I won’t argue against measuring those things because obviously you think those numbers are important and so do I, but I would like to offer an alternative for the stats that are “per game”.

Rather than just any of those numbers divided by the number of innings in a regulation game at that level, I much prefer seeing things offered in more ways, in order to take into consideration what kid of pitcher this person is and be able to judge him fairly against all the others.

As you can see from the pic, I couldn’t care less about how many anything a P gets per game, but I do care quite a bit about how many per inning, which is becoming less meaningful to me as time goes by, and more importantly, how many anything per batter, but also how many pitches per each of those events. This way, I don't have to tell you what level these P's are because they're not measured by a game. BTW, they are HSV.

Its not that I don’t value the same things you do, but I just believe they’re much more meaningful measured in different ways.

[scorekeeper]

In self-evaluating either pitching or hitting at amateur level, the only useful answer would be the brutally honest one: what did I do against the best around? Against the top tier of pitchers or hitters, omitting the weak and incompetent. In pitching, against the top of the order usually. Hitting, consistently hitting or at least locking horns with the best: getting the hit or two in 1, 2, 3, 4-hitters. Design your own standard, monitor accordingly, revise upward with improvement.

Easy competition is practice for the tough ones. A home run in a laugher is only that and not the hot streak before the slump (against real pitching). Being honest with yourself is all that works.

That’s a perfectly valid observation, and good advice. But to tell the truth, its much more difficult to put into practice than one might think. I’ve been trying for over 10 years to find a way to measure it, but so far have only come up with a poor at best way to do it.

The main problem is, how does one measure who the “best” around are? It’s a pretty easy thing to do using one’s own perceptions, but when you try to do it using statistics, it becomes much more difficult.

FI, if I was trying to “normalize” all hitters to see how they did against the best competition, the 1st thing I need to do is determine who’s the “best”. just to keep things easy for me, let’s assume we’re talking about HSV. How does anyone determine the pecking order of all the pitchers a player happens to hit against?

Since there’s absolutely no way I know of to get data on every HS pitcher one might come across in a given season, I cheated. What I do during the season is, allow the opposing team’s record to pretty much determine the status of the pitchers. I take the team’s record after the game, and use the wining percentage as a factor.

Here’s an example. If a team is .500, what I do is multiply the hitter’s hits by that .500, then compute his BA. So, if a hitter goes 2-4 against that team, considering the opponent, he’s really only got 1 hit, which makes his BA against that team .250 instead of .500. Doing that for every game, it gives a running total of hits based on how good the opponent was, and when it gets totaled, you end up with a season to date BA based on the opponent. Of course if the opponent had a .750 or .250 WPCT, the hits would reflect that.

But although that’s a “better” way than just straight computations, it still pretty much sucks. ;) It may be that you play a crappy team but face a really great P, or play a really great team, but face a really crappy P. I know of no way to take into account an opponents “worth” at the amateur level with numbers, so that means its left to the “perception” of what people believe is true, rather than what is true.

There is another thing I always have a problem with. Its great to say Joe hits great against the top teams/pitchers, but does Joe only bat against the best? Heck no! He’s gonna bat against some “poor” P’s too. why should his performances against them be thrown out? Maybe he pounds them like a bass drum as people would expect, but what if he can’t hit them worth a flip? So what would be more telling, a hitter who can hit well against the best competition, however that’s defined, or a hitter who can’t hit dink against the weaker P’s he faces?

I’ve never disagreed that performing against the best is a good measure of a player, but how the “best” is determined is a real issue. And, since an amateur hitter will face more P’s who are not top of the heap, to throw out the performances against them doesn’t seem to me to give a very true picture.

If you’re interested, you can see examples of the hitting at http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/images/spBatting.pdf pages 8 & 9.

[virg]

scorekeeper you're correct if the task is evaluating others or awarding honors at season's end. My comment is directed, as carefully stated, at self-evaluation. Honest self appraisal taken for personal reasons in familiar company. F I, to go 5 for5, batting 6th in a 7-inning fastpitch game the one valid question I'd raise is; how bad was the pitching to allow the 5ABs in 7 innings? What I would Not trifle with was a "1.000 BA" that day.

[scorekeeper]

scorekeeper you're correct if the task is evaluating others or awarding honors at season's end. My comment is directed, as carefully stated, at self-evaluation. Honest self appraisal taken for personal reasons in familiar company. F I, to go 5 for5, batting 6th in a 7-inning fastpitch game the one valid question I'd raise is; how bad was the pitching to allow the 5ABs in 7 innings? What I would Not trifle with was a "1.000 BA" that day.

There’s sure a lot of things about this ol’ game that cause confusion , aren’t there? :crazy

I suppose that sooner or later, we all have to make that leap of faith that we’re the best possible judge of something, but in reality, I’m not so sure that’s ever possible, especially when the something being judged, is us. :sigh:

The way you judge the pitching in the example isn’t wrong, but its certainly different than the way I’d look at it. Mebbe that’s the game where everyone who had been hitting the ball hard, but right at a glove, finally missed a few of those gloves. Mebbe that was the day the league’s star P started the game, but developed a blister or something else, and tried to pitch anyway.

As far as not trifling with a 5 for 5 day, that could be a cumbersome thing too. I’ve seen days where players get 3 duck farts hits and 2 IF hits and feel like crap about the way they hit, while some other guy stings the ball 5 straight times, but there are web gem plays being made that never give him a single hit.

What I’m trying to say is, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, and that beholder must really take care to consider as many things as possible before he makes his final judgment.
:think:

[FiveFrameSwing]

I have tried to figure out what is the best stat to see how good a pitcher is: ERA or his opponents batting average.

So far I can't figure out.

Can you help?

Thanks.

ERA is a measurement of the entire team, including the defense. The reality is that once a ball is put in play the pitcher has no control over whether or not it will result in a hit.

Studies have shown that using the ERA to rate pitchers is misleading.

A better method would be DIPS, which stands for Defense Independent Pitching Statistic. This rewards a pitcher for a strikeout and punishes a pitcher for a walk, hit-by-pitch or home-run (all things that the defense isn't involved in). Further, a pitcher is rewarded for any grounder that the batter puts a ball in play.

The idea behind DIPS is to discover which pitchers are the best independent of their team.

[scorekeeper]

ERA is a measurement of the entire team, including the defense. The reality is that once a ball is put in play the pitcher has no control over whether or not it will result in a hit.

Studies have shown that using the ERA to rate pitchers is misleading.

A better method would be DIPS, which stands for Defense Independent Pitching Statistic. This rewards a pitcher for a strikeout and punishes a pitcher for a walk, hit-by-pitch or home-run (all things that the defense isn't involved in). Further, a pitcher is rewarded for any grounder that the batter puts a ball in play.

The idea behind DIPS is to discover which pitchers are the best independent of their team.


Although DIPS is extremely interesting as well as revolutionary, to me there’s still enough controversy surrounding it, that whether or not is really says what people think it says, is debatable.

I think what needs to first be determined, is what an individual means when they say they want to know which stat best shows how “good” a pitcher, or indeed, fielder, batter, or runner is. To many people, depending on the context, the “best” P is the one who gets’ the most “W’s”, or it may be the one who allows the fewest runners to reach, or it may be who gets the most K’s or anything else.

From what I saw in one article, http://www.diamond-mind.com/articles/ipavg2.htm
Charlie Hough was the DIPS career leader in holding enemy hitters to an in-play batting average that was 26 points lower than that of the pitchers on his teams. Does that mean he’s the “best pitcher of all time?

For my money, DIPS is far too complicated for the run-of-the-mill baseball fan to intuitively understand, and nearly impossible to calculate for any level below MLB., and to me that makes it something great to look at and talk about, but not too great to use or to try to calculate.