xERA Is Now on FanGraphs!
We’ve added Statcast’s xERA to our player pages, in the same way we added xwOBA, xBA, and xSLG last week!
xERA uses exit velocity, launch angle, and sprint speed on “topped” or “weakly hit” balls to model what a player’s ERA would look like based on the underlying characteristics of the balls in play.
Additionally, xERA has been added to the player page dashboard, and EV has been replaced with average fastball velocity (vFA).
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
Thank you David, very xCool!
My favorite addition of these stats – excellent stuff!
We should have xPected this. xCellent.
xFine
Thanks! How does this differ from xFIP?
xFIP is to FIP what this is to ERA. FIP uses events as a calculation input (K, HR, etc), while xFIP uses batted ball data to see if the events were flukey or not. xERA uses batted ball data to see if the pitcher’s ERA was flukey or not.
The main difference is that FIP isn’t really an ERA predictor, even though it’s often used like one.
xFIP is actually just a version of FIP that adjusts for HR/FB luck. It doesn’t use any statcast data like xERA does
FIP is an ERA estimator that uses only four stats as inputs, Walks, HBP, Strikeouts, and HR. xFIP says that HR rate isn’t really controlled by the pitcher, so it replaces HR with league average home runs. IOW it is a guy’s FIP if he gave up the EXPECTED amount of home runs.
xERA is far more complicated than that. It is trying to take inputs from StatCast (mentioned in the article) to say what a guy’s ERA should be expected to be, considering the statcast outcomes that have resulted from his pitches.
Is there a way to add new xstats to the Ottoneu Fangraphs Free Agent leaderboards? I don’t see them available as part of custom leaderboards found here: https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasyleaders
Here’s the full URL: https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasyleaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=major&qual=0&type=8&season=2020&month=0&season1=&ind=&team=&rost=&age=&fl=835&ft=-1&players=
Could you add an average of xERA to the total at the bottom? That would be xCellent!
xERA, xSLG, and xBA are all great and useful innovations! But they’d be even more great useful if you included them to the sortable stats section of this website. Any plans to do that?
Yes. A leaderboard please.
Thanks for this! With xERA in the fold what becomes of the utility of FIP? It seems like FIP was an initial attempt to get at “xERA” but with cruder inputs. To me xERA largely replaces FIP. What do you guys think?
Please include the MLB Average feature for each Statcast metric. These numbers are only so helpful if we can’t compare them to the league average.
How does xERA compare to FIP and xFIP as predictive measures when modeling for projection?