[Brianfo]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Fielding Independent Pitching is a measurement of what a pitcher would do if you removed luck and defense from the equation, giving him league average luck on balls in play. It's an attempt to normalize for the pitchers who have good defense behind them, and who are riding good/bad streaks of luck in order to truly evaluate their worth.

xFIP adds in the league average HR/FB ratio to better normalize the measurement.

It works extremely well. If a pitcher has an xFIP higher than their ERA they are getting lucky. Lower and they are unlucky.


Further explanation:

Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average. Back in the early 2000s, research by Voros McCracken revealed that the amount of balls that fall in for hits against pitchers do not correlate well across seasons. In other words, pitchers have little control over balls in play. McCracken outlined a better way to assess a pitcher’s talent level by looking at results a pitcher can control: strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and homeruns.


A walk is not as harmful as a homerun and a strikeout has less impact than both. FIP accounts for these kinds of differences, presenting the results on the same scale as ERA. It has been shown to be more effective than ERA in terms of predicting future performance and has become a mainstay in sabermetric analysis.

Its a royals thread fuqtard. Be on your way. You really are an annoying ****. Go beat off to stan musial.