ERA-, FIP- , xFIP-
Last night I rolled out ERA-, FIP-, and xFIP- to the site. These are all park and league adjusted and basically your pitching equivalent of wRC+, except that lower is better, with 100 still being average.
You can read more about ERA- (or as it’s called in the article, aERA) here.
These are now available in all the player pages and leaderboards.
One other quick addition was adding Shutdowns (SD) and Meltdowns (MD) to the player pages.
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
What are the chief differences between ERA+ and ERA- or are they essentially the same thing?
Nice work! Any chance of us seeing tERA-?
Noodles Hahn!
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1005205&position=P
It’s going to take a little time to realize that a ERA- of 90 is good not mediocre. But it’s a good idea.
Fangraphs just gets better and better. How much do we pay for this S, again?
Show your appreciation by contributing to Community Research! Make this site even better.
Can we expect these stats to be added to the historical leaderboards? That would be awesome!
Rock on, guys!
ERA+ is league divided by player.
ERA- is player divided by league.
EXCEPT for ERA+, every single indexed metric is always player divided by league.
To read more about the problems with ERA+, go here:
http://tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php?title=ERA%2B
Neat. Thanks!
Great, thanks!
Always made sense to me to do it this way-you can now see what % of league average (adjusted, natch) runs that the pitcher allows.
Question – Why is the default sort order for the batters leaderboards worst to first? Like if you go to the leaderboards and click on the wOBA stat Cesat Izturis is at the top of the list. Seems backwards, should sort the other way!
It’s not “worst to first”, it’s “least to most.” So for most hitting statistics, it sorts worst to best, but most pitching stats are sorted best to worst.
So what does that accomplish? It’s a minor thing obviously, but I think it would be a slight improvement if Fangraphs reversed that for hitting stats. I don’t think people look up the players with the least HR, or least SB, or lowest wOBA or wRC+, etc. very often.
If you click the header a second time, it’ll sort descending. It toggles.
I’ve asked for this before — basically what they need to do is track the “preferred” sort order for each stat, and use that when the appropriate header is clicked (and then continue with the toggling if it is clicked again after that).
On the topic of changing presented statistical data –
What about using K% and B% instead of per 9 inning rates?
Just thought I’d mention it, possibly the only small improvement I could suggest to improve this sites amazing player data section.
I second this, and I know Dave Cameron has said he prefers it in the past. Percentages simply make more sense, and inning rates can lead to false conclusions. A less efficient pitcher like Erik Bedard seems nearly as effective as Cliff Lee if you just look at k/9.
Any time you use “Per Inning”, you no longer have a stat that is defense independant. FanGraphs doesn’t seem to realize this.
What I would love to see on the stat pages is Quality Starts, High-Quality Starts (defined as 7+ IP allowing = IP).
How do you adjust for park factors on ERA-, FIP-, and xFIP-? Do you adjust for each individual game they play in each individual stadium? Or is it a blanket adjustment assuming 50% of games are played at home and 50% are on the road, which, sticking to assumptions, would hover around average park factors. I’m hoping the former.
That was nice of them to answer your very good question.