This morning, we rolled out several new pitching metrics, and I outlined their uses in an overly long introductory post. If you haven’t read those posts, go do so now, as they essentially set the table for this post.

As we noted this morning, our goal in introducing Fielding Dependent Pitching is to help quantify some of the missing aspects of run prevention that are not captured in Fielding Independent Pitching. However, you also have undoubtedly noted that we have not changed how we are calculating pitcher WAR, and FDP is not included in those calculations.

I promise that this is not because we are stubborn and refuse to admit that pitchers have some control over hits on balls in play. In actuality, the decision to leave FDP out of pitcher WAR for now was actually a difficult one, and was not our original intention when we developed FDP. The genesis of creating metrics to measure the wins added on balls in play and runner stranding was an effort to improve the way we calculate WAR, and we planned on modifying WAR to account for both FIP and FDP. Trust me, we don’t like some of the weird-looking results that a FIP-based pitcher WAR produces any more than you do.

However, when it came to actually modifying the formula, we came to the same crossroads that caused us to choose a FIP-based WAR when we created our initial implementation several years ago, and that was a trade-off between being more comprehensive at the cost of making an arbitrary decision about the level of defensive support a pitcher received. For whatever flaws FIP-based WAR has, it is strikingly good at being transparent in exactly what it is measuring and not measuring, and making no claims beyond what it knows it can support with data. Because walks, strikeouts, and home runs only really involve two parties — or three, if you count the umpire — it is easy to assign full responsibility for the outcome of these events to the pitcher. FIP knows what each of these events are worth, and judges a pitcher solely on the things that we can say were the direct result of their actions.

When you introduce balls in play into the equation, those blacks and whites become very gray. How much of a pitcher’s BABIP is he responsible for, and how much is the result of his defenders? We honestly don’t know.

And so, in not knowing, any decision we made now to add some portion of FDP into pitcher WAR would have required an arbitrary decision. In reality, the things that make up FDP are messy, acting more like football or basketball plays with multiple variables interacting together, and much less like the kinds of baseball plays that make it fairly easy to say “this guy did that, and he deserves this much credit for it.” Even if we decided that a pitcher should get half credit for his BABIP — my initial position, in the interest of full disclosure — what do we do with strand rates that are highly affected by BABIP distributions?

For instance, let’s look at Jordan Zimmermann’s line this season. His 2.63 ERA is nearly a full run better than his 3.43 FIP, and while his .280 BABIP is a little below the league average, only +0.6 wins of his FDP come from BIP-wins. Most of the difference between his ERA and his FIP have come from runner stranding.

Bases Empty: .280/.324/.420, .323 wOBA
Men On Base: .192/.240/.305, .241 wOBA
RISP: .154/.201/.225, .180 wOBA

If those splits were the result of a drastic improvement in his FIP, we would probably want to give Zimmerman nearly all of the credit for his LOB-wins. After all, pitching better with men on base is clearly more valuable than melting down and letting everyone score, and a pitcher should be rewarded for his ability to buckle down under pressure.

However, we can’t say that the results are completely due to Zimmerman buckling down in those situations.

Bases Empty: 3.59 FIP, .330 BABIP
Men On Base: 3.27 FIP, .215 BABIP
RISP: 2.61 FIP, .185 BABIP

Yes, he’s pitched better with men on base, but his rate of hits on balls in play is the primary driving force behind his strand rate. What amount of credit should Zimmerman get for these results? Should he get more or less credit than Johnny Cueto, who has also posted an extremely high strand rate, but has done it without significant BABIP splits?

I think we could probably all come up with a number that we could justify for each pitcher, and maybe all those numbers would even be pretty similar, but I have yet to see a methodology that would make that pick anything other than arbitrary. Our strong hope is that a methodology will be discovered soon, and advances in our understanding of how to split credit between pitchers and fielders will give us a systematic way to incorporate some percentage of FDP into pitcher WAR.

What that percentage should be, I don’t think we really know yet, and rather than impose our best guess onto the calculations and hope that we’re in the ballpark of reality, we’ve decided to keep WAR transparent about what it is and is not measuring, and display all of the various components of FDP so that you can can make whatever adjustments you feel are warranted. Essentially, we have decided that it is better to provide you with as much information as possible in a way that is free of our personal opinions on what percentage of hit prevention is pitching or fielding.

Our decision to leave FDP out of WAR means that it is not comprehensive in measuring all aspects of run prevention, but we think it is better — for now — to leave it based solely on FIP until more research produces a consensus, systematic way to reward pitchers for some aspect of FDP that does not require us to simply pick an arbitrary number and force it upon you. And, hopefully, by displaying all these components separately, we’re providing tools that could be useful in researching the various aspects of run prevention, and may even aid in the creation of a logical way to give pitcher’s credit for some portion their FDP in WAR.

Our hope is that pitcher WAR will not always face these same hurdles, but we feel like it is better to be up front about what kinds of compromises would have to be made in order to attempt to be more thorough than it is to simply force decisions that couldn’t be defended on an empirical level. For now, I’d encourage you to look at pitcher WAR as a baseline for what we know a pitcher was responsible for, and then make your own decisions about how much you want to adjust for each aspect of FDP. Personally, I’m likely to give more credit to LOB-wins than BIP-wins, but I don’t believe I have enough data to defend a challenge of that opinion. So, for now, WAR is still based on FIP, but we’ve attempted to give you the tools to make rational adjustments where you see fit.

If you want to simply evaluate a pitcher on his runs allowed, you can now do that on FanGraphs. If you want to blend FIP and Runs Allowed evenly, simply cut FDP by half and add it to his current WAR. If you want to give more credit for runner stranding and less for hit prevention, you now have a better starting place than you did yesterday. Our hope is that these tools empower you to be more comprehensive in your own evaluation of a pitcher, however you deem it best to do that.

A few minutes ago, David Appelman announced the launch of several new stats here on the site, and since they hit on a topic of frequent discussion, I wanted to go into a bit more depth on our thought process behind their creation and what we see as their role in the evaluation of pitching.

Over the years, FanGraphs hasn’t been shy about promoting the concept of DIPS, which showed that most of the variance in a pitcher’s abilities can be viewed through the prism of walks, strikeouts, and home runs. We often cite a pitcher’s FIP — Fielding Independent Pitching, if you’re into proper names – when talking about his performance, and for most Major League pitchers, FIP works really well as an evaluator of their contribution to run prevention.

However, because FIP only focuses on walks, strikeouts, and home runs, it does not include all aspects of run prevention. Specifically, it takes no stance on two aspects of the game that do have a significant impact on a pitcher’s total number of runs allowed – the results of batted balls that are not home runs and the effects of sequencing of the various events. Because the spread in talent among Major League pitchers is not as large in these areas as the spread is in the components of FIP, ignoring these two areas doesn’t have a drastic result on the evaluation of most pitchers. However, there is certainly a subset of Major League pitchers who do accumulate (or fritter away) value through their performance in these two categories.

So, today, we’re introducing a set of metrics designed to help quantify the affects of run prevention that are not so easily isolated as the result of a pitcher’s actions. Because these metrics essentially serve to capture the value that FIP does not, we’re calling the sum of these metrics Fielding Dependent Pitching.

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While the Orioles bullpen has continued to keep them in the playoff race, the Orioles rotation has been a bit of a patchwork job all year long, and so today, they’ve reportedly signed a new patch named Randy Wolf.

While you can perhaps make a case for a change-of-scenery helping give players a fresh start, it’s hard to imagine Wolf is going to be anything besides a bad pitcher in the AL East, however. Here are Wolf’s numbers relative to league average from each of the last three seasons.

2010: 105 ERA-/122 FIP-/118 xFIP-
2011: 98 ERA-/113 FIP-/116 xFIP-
2012: 145 ERA-/122 FIP-/113 xFIP-

As is often the case, Wolf’s results have jummped around a bit despite his overall profile not changing much, as his walk rate, strikeout rate, and groundball rate are all pretty close to his career norms this year. However, after a couple of years of outperforming his peripherals due to hits on balls in play and runner stranding, he’s now gone the other way this year, getting victimized by those two variables.

For his career, Wolf has been slightly above average in both hit prevention and runner stranding, so there’s more reason to believe that he has (or had) some ability to outperform his FIP. However, that ability simply moved him from being meh to being okay, and at age 35, he seems to be closer to the meh end of the spectrum. His decline in strikeout rate tells a lot of the story.

Source: FanGraphs — Randy Wolf

The Orioles aren’t exactly flush with pitching depth, and since the Brewers released him, the Orioles are only responsible for the pro-rated league minimum for the remainder of the year. Giving Wolf a roster spot in September in the hopes that he finds some of his previous ball in play voodoo isn’t a terrible gamble for roughly $80,000, but Wolf’s performance trends and the move to the AL East suggest this probably isn’t going to work very well.

It’s basically the cheapest possible solution on the market, but in this case, the Orioles probably will get what they paid for.

On Friday night, the Dodgers made their latest calculated gamble, taking on $260 million in future salaries from the Red Sox in order to acquire Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto. In the write-up I did on Friday, I noted that the best way to explain this trade from the Dodgers perspective is that they are attempting to capitalize on their current contender status under the hope that they can achieve a significant revenue bounce from a playoff run that could offset a large part of the costs of these acquisitions.

There’s another theory floating around, however, that has to do with the upcoming free agent class. If we accept that the Dodgers were going to spend this much money at some point in the near future, the argument is that the relatively unimpressive group of free agents set to hit the market this winter made this a better choice than spending the same money on free agents in three months and getting inferior players without the added bonus of their production down the stretch in 2012.

So, let’s go through the options, and see what else the Dodgers could have potentially done with their giant wad of cash.

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While nothing has been made official yet, it appears that the Red Sox and Dodgers are going to soon finalize one of the largest (and most interesting) deals in baseball history. The deal is believed to inclue Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto heading to Los Angeles, with a group of five players (including James Loney, Rubby de la Rosa, Jerry Sands, Ivan DeJesus and “a prospect”) headed back to Boston.

We knew a shake-up was coming in Boston. We’re a year into the team badly underperforming their talent level, and the general circus atmosphere around the organization couldn’t be sustained much longer. A shake-up was inevitable. Beginning the demolition in one fell swoop was less predictable, however.

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Source: An unidentified team has claimed Josh Beckett on trade waivers. One MLB exec believes it may be Dodgers, but unconfirmed for now.

— Sean McAdam(@Sean_McAdam) August 24, 2012

Per the tweet above from Sean McAdam, Josh Beckett was claimed on waivers by someone with a lot of money to burn, apparently. When I wrote about Beckett’s trade value yesterday, I guessed that that the Red Sox would have to pick up $20 million or so of the remaining $36 million left on his deal. By putting in a waiver claim, the unnamed team is agreeing to take the entire contract, and let Boston off the hook for the remainder of the deal.

This is pretty great news for Boston, assuming that Beckett’s 10-and-5 rights don’t come into play and allow him to block any deal. By virtue of the CBA, Beckett has a blanket no-trade clause, though it is somewhat unclear if those rights can be used to block assignment via waivers. I believe the answer is yes, but am not 100% certain. Either way, I’d imagine the Red Sox will give Beckett whatever he wants to waive those rights and go to a team that actually wants to pay him $36 million for the next 2+ years.

In terms of who the claimant is, speculation focuses on the Dodgers mostly because they quite obviously have a large amount of money and are not afraid to throw it around. They were awarded claims for Cliff Lee, Adrian Gonzalez, and Joe Blanton already, and took the remainder of Hanley Ramirez’s deal before the trade deadline, so taking on money has clearly not been a discouragement to adding talent. However, with Clayton Kershaw, Chris Capuano, Chad Billingsley, Aaron Harang, and Joe Blanton already in the rotation, it’s not clear that Beckett would be a significant piece for the Dodgers this year, and they almost certainly could have landed a better pitcher in free agency this winter.

We should find out soon who the claiming team is, because it would be a pretty huge shock if Boston pulled him back. Perhaps an even bigger shock than the fact that he got claimed in the first place.

Update: It is the Dodgers. Potential theory – they agreed to take Beckett in an Adrian Gonzalez trade. This will make more sense if Gonzalez ends up in LA.

If you go to the leaderboards for 2012, you’ll see all the familiar names – Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, David Wright, etc… However, something kinda fun happens if you then reset the minimum plate appearances filter down to, say, 50 plate appearances, so you capture some performances from guys who aren’t exactly everyday players. Then, sandwiched in between Trout and Joey Votto, you find one player who you might not expect to be on a list of the league’s top hitters.

Yes, that’s Erik Kratz, currently tied with Joey Votto for the best wRC+ of any hitter in the National League. The 32-year-old journeyman backup catcher who began the year in the minors and came into the 2012 season with one career extra base hit in the big leagues. He’s basically Crash Davis, as he has nearly 3,000 minor league plate appearances, including over 1,500 in Triple-A. And now, finally given a chance to play every once in a while due to Carlos Ruiz’s injury, Kratz is killing the baseball.

14 of his 22 hits have gone for extra bases. His .406 ISO is nearly 100 points better than the next highest batter with 50+ plate appearances. Among catcher seasons with that same 50 PA minimum, Kratz’s 181 wRC+ ranks seventh all time, one spot below Mike Piazza’s career year of 1997.

Yes, we could also see that it ranks six spots below Taylor Teagarden, whose 2008 season ranks as the best wRC+ from any catcher in a season with 50+ PA, but what fun would that be? It’s far more enjoyable to link Kratz to Mike Piazza.

In a season where nearly everything has gone wrong, the Phillies have a 32-year-old rookie catcher who has been as productive at the plate as Joey Votto. Okay, fine, small sample size, unsustainable performance, blah blah blah. Instead of raining on his parade, I’m just going to celebrate with Erik Kratz, the new king of National League hitting. Congratulations on what has to be one very fulfilling ride.

Pretty much every player in the Majors goes on waivers at some point in August, so the fact that Josh Beckett was placed on waivers isn’t really news. However, unlike most players in baseball, Beckett will almost certainly clear waivers, since he’s due approximately $4 million over the remainder of the 2012 season and $15.75 million in each of the next two seasons. Any team claiming Beckett would be on the hook for $36 million, and he’s clearly not worth that kind of investment at this point, so he’ll sail through waivers without any blinking.

Once he clears, the Red Sox will be able to trade him to any team that’s interested, and they can create additional interest by picking up a significant chunk of his salary in order to move him. At that point, the question becomes how much cash Boston should be willing to eat to move on from their struggling former ace.

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Well, Melky Cabrera might now have some company. Jon Heyman is reporting that Bartolo Colon has failed a drug test and is subject to a 50 game suspension by MLB, which would end his season and make him ineligible for most of the playoffs.

Colon has been fantastic for the A’s this season at age 39, but his career revival was subject to some skepticism surrounding the injections of platelet rich plasma that he received in 2011, which raised questions about what kinds of treatments are performance enhancing in a viable way and which ones should be illegal. Colon was the poster child for the positive effects of PRP, and it seems unlikely that promoters of the treatment will continue to lean on him as evidence of its success.

For the A’s, this is certainly a blow, but the arrival of Brett Anderson from the disabled list now looks like incredibly valuable. Anderson might not be able to pitch at the same level that Colon did, but he should be able to replace most of that production, and help keep Oakland in the pennant race.

For Colon, my guess is that this will be the end of the line. He had trouble finding work last winter, and now heading into his age 40 season and coming off a PED suspension, I don’t imagine too many teams will be lining up to give him another shot.