Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrap Irony
And, once again, jojo, FIP doesn't play well with Arroyo's success throughout his tenure as a Red. He's either a FIP outlier or one of the luckiest pitchers in modern baseball.
ERA, perception, scouting, and almost every counting statistic in baseball pegs Arroyo as an above average starter.
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Funny how when a guy drops his LD rate and ups the GB% he benefits from his defense.
I think the attempts to separate the performance of the pitcher from the defense overlooks that the type of contact that a pitcher allows has a direct effect on his team's DER. I guess when Arroyo was outperforming his FIP in 2006 and 2007 that such stellar defenders as EdE, Griffey, Keppinger, Ross, Conine, Aurilia, Lopez, Javy and of course Adam Dunn were playing Hall of Fame defense behind him. David Weathers seemed to have the same effect on his defense. Every year we'd hear that he was awful, BABIP, blah, blah, blah and every year his results would still be pretty good. I was right there on the bandwagon for a while with the BABIP and FIP guys, but the stat just doesn't capture all the factors and seems just as flawed as ERA or ERA+ IMO.
I'd agree with the notion xFIP and maybe even FIP are better predictors of the future than an outlying ERA from the previous season. But, IMO, 4 years of ERA+ data tells a better story of how the guy actually performed (since its based on actual results) than some contrived substitute based on theoretical results. All these stats have their place. The trick is knowing which are appropriate at which point. I think that is lost on a lot of people.