That's because you may have already read a similar post on Oftentimes, people ask a FanGraphs writer or a well-established stathead where to start and their typical answer is to start with The rest of this post will walk you through the process of evaluating a pitcher using sabermetric thinking and stats. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author.

FanGrap… It doesn't look like there's anything particularly different about Shields between this year and last, other than a slight uptick in ground balls, but he's been up and down with those during his entire career.Put it this way, Shields is pitching very much like we would expect him to pitch. The fielder didn't. Batted ball velocity numbers are out there, but they aren't publicly available yet, so we have to make do.No sabermetrician would argue that FIP captures everything about pitching, which leads me to my advice to newly curious fans.

As a result, pitchers can be quite fickle commodities and prone to injuries and irregular career paths.

If you're able to keep the ball on the ground, you aren't going to give up as many runs, all else equal.You care about how well the pitcher helps their team prevent runs, but that doesn't mean you can look at their earned runs allowed or total runs allowed and be done.

Team Batting Stats You don't want to penalize him for having poor defense behind him, but you also have to remember that earned versus unearned runs don't capture the true difference between good defense and bad defense, just a random assortment of the way in which the defense performed poorly.That 1.4 fWAR in 11 starts and 73.1 innings is a very solid number, rating out to something in the 4 fWAR range over a full season which would put him in the second tier of starting pitchers. Some portion of those runs belong to the pitcher and statistics like FIP try to estimate that value.
Here are the early returns on the results.The 2020 MLB season is not going to end up with teams playing the same number of games, but that doesn’t make it illigitimate.

Today

If you're well-versed in advanced stats, this post isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know.

Minor League Leaders They play a role, but the quality of their defense, along with simple dumb luck, factor into the number of hits allowed and we don't want to evaluate a pitcher's performance based on the defense and luck. Steve is the editor-in-chief of DRaysBay and the keeper of the FanGraphs Library.

Most people show up halfway through the party and sometimes when you show up late, you don't know where to put your coat and you're too embarrassed to ask. Part 1 of this series dove into advanced hitting stats for bettors. They also have a stat called RA9-WAR, which uses runs allowed per nine as the base. If you grew up reading Bill James at your father's knee, you're unusual. Find line reports, best bets, and subscribe to push notifications in the Betting News section.

He's given up eight unearned runs. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous.You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon.

If you're watching every at bat, you know when a batter crushed a ball and when one barely found a hole, but you aren't going to remember every one, you're going to make subjective judgments, and you certainly didn't watch every swing in the league during a season. Website admin will know that you reported it. It doesn’t look like a Glossary. Here we will cover batted balls, quality of contact, and plate discipline. You'll notice the format and especially the introduction of this post look very familiar. 2020 Pre-Season Projections

A 3.00 FIP or ERA at Coors Field is much more impressive than one at Petco Park.Park adjusting is slightly tricky to calculate, but very easy to understand.
It’s time to look beyond the basic pitching metrics and dive into some of the best tools at our disposal for pitcher evaluation. WAR Tools It's their job to make sure the fewest possible runs score, but they are also out there with eight other players, so you can't simply look at their runs allowed and be finished.We can start by dividing aspects of run prevention into two categories: those that the pitcher controls almost entirely and those in which his defense plays a major role.

Now let's put it to use.So how's James Shields doing this year? The Injury Zone – Hardball Times/Josh Kalk.

There is much more to know, but hopefully this gives you a sense about how to think through an evaluation using advanced stats.

Probably just south of the ace category, but it wouldn't be crazy to call him a lesser ace given his durability.Again, this was a lot of information and I still think I'm leaving plenty out.

All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman.All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com Which brings us to Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) which is the same thing as FIP except that it calculates the number of home runs you After that, we turn to Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). This leads us to Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS), and the most well-known among them is Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP).FIP takes a pitcher's strikeouts, walks, hit batters, and home runs allowed per inning and generates a number that looks exactly like ERA and can be read the same way.

Now picture one with So we know that pitchers aren't universally responsible for hits allowed. Splits Leaders Rookie Leaders Grounders find holes more often than fly balls, but ground balls go for extra bases very rarely. Win Probability & Box Scores If a starter punches out 15 on Opening Day but usually averages six, don't overreact.