Excerpt:
You can read the rest at the link above.I got on the subject of looking up pitchers whose ERAs wildly differ from their actual performance level today so I decided to share. We hopefully all know by now that ERA is a very flawed measurement of a pitcher’s performance and that is why we defer to metrics like FIP, DERA or tRA. Using a combination of the three, I decided to pull the top five pitches on each side of the luck spectrum and present them.
First, a word of explanation on what I mean when I use the term luck. It actually comprises three distinct realms: defense, park and noise. A pitcher may change his or her approach depending on the quality of the defense behind him, though I am not sure if we have ever seen an extensive study really delve into the topic, but I consider the presence of a good or bad defense behind the pitcher to be outside of his control and thus, a pitcher is lucky if he has a good one and unlucky if he does not. Ditto on pitcher’s versus hitter’s parks. The last part is the actual luck, or noise as we statisticians are more apt to label it.
I've found this interesting because the Reds have some pitchers who've been helped and hurt by their defense. Rhodes and Cueto seem to have been "picked up" by the defense most often while Homer Bailey and Jared Burton have been "let down."
As a team, the Reds defense has helped their pitchers out quite a bit. On the other end of the spectrum, it looks like the Indians D has let their pitchers down regulary.
Any thoughts?