Sonnanstine and E.R.A. Don’t See Eye to Eye
While writing and researching this post it is still hard to believe, for this baseball fan at least, that the Tampa Bay Rays are currently 45-31, a full fourteen games over .500. Not to say I didn’t expect them to be good but their turnaround has been remarkable and very fun to keep tabs on. In looking over some of their statistics I came across this interesting little nugget: Andy Sonnanstine leads the AL in E-F, at 1.53.
E-F, or ERA-FIP as you may have seen at The Hardball Times, does just what the title suggests: it subtracts the FIP from the ERA in order to see which pitchers have been lucky or unlucky with regards to their earned run barometer and controllable skills measure. Sonnanstine has a 4.85 ERA yet a 3.32 FIP. That FIP ranks 8th best in the league and the only other E-Fs higher, in all of baseball, belong to Bronson Arroyo and Ian Snell; their ERAs are 6+ right now.
Adding to my interest level are Sonnanstine’s numbers last year: a 5.85 ERA and a 4.26 FIP, resulting in a 1.59 E-F. So, two years running now Andy has posted an ERA over 1.5 runs worse than his controllable skills (BB, K, HR) would suggest. It didn’t even matter that this year’s ERA is a full run lower. Not surprisingly, his .348 BABIP is the highest in the AL, and his 63.8% LOB rate is the second lowest in the league. For comparison’s sake, the AL average LOB rate at this juncture is 72.36%.
Due to this lack of luck, his win probability metrics have taken some serious hits. Andy’s -0.39 WPA ranks 5th worst in the league while his -0.34 WPA/LI registers 8th from the bottom. Despite one of the best measures of controllable skills in the league, he has statistically been one of the worst contributors to success. Whereas Aaron Harang has been unlucky in terms of his W-L barometer, Sonnanstine has been unlucky in a number of different areas yet currently holds an 8-3 record.
Sonnanstine has been unlucky thus far in terms of the numbers largely out of his control but don’t tell that to his W-L record, which is good enough to introduce himself to plenty of fantasy owners out there.
Eric is an accountant and statistical analyst from Philadelphia. He also covers the Phillies at Phillies Nation and can be found here on Twitter.
an interesting thing about Sonnanstine is that his BABIP is actually higher this year, even though the team BABIP for Tampa pitchers has gone from .334 last year to .281 this year, showing the huge improvement in team defense. Sonnastine’s BABIP last year was actually better (.329 to .334) than Tampa’s defense would suggest. But obviously this year he has been quite unlucky