The most undervalued/overvalued SP's this year via FIP.

That has to be factored into any trade consideration.

and Sweeney for Stammen.

it’s just a wrong statement. Minnesota didn’t have a bad defense at all this year (judging to your metric).

Now if I were you, and so firmly behind the idea that FIP is be all, end all in correctly evaluating pitchers, I would ask myself – how come that the exactly same defense “deteriorated” the numbers of your “Big 3”, yet “improved” the numbers of most everybody else on the Minnesota staff?

And if I wouldn’t find a logical answer, I might be just a bit hesitant making such definite statements as you seem to be making.

His statement (“Minnesota has a horrible defense”) was based not on Slowey alone, but on the fact that three Minnesota starters appeared in his list. Liriano, for example, is an extreme ground ball pitcher and his ERA-FIP differential is double that of Slowey. So although your explanation seems logical, the data doesn’t add up. Judging by such common sense, we would expect Slowey to be butchered by defense and Liriano to be aided by it, whereas it is actually Liriano being butchered by it. Such examples are exactly the reason why I’m personally cautious about overly relying on FIP.

But what you say does make me think of how FIP plays in different ballparks. Minnesota moved to a new park, that seemed to suppress HR like no other park in the majors last year. Of those balls that would be HR somewhere else and count against FIP, many were probably not caught and bounced of the wall for doubles, thus counting against defense.

FIP is not normalized in most cases, right? Is there a normalized one (ball park effects) out there, too, does anyone know that?

For all the talk FIP is getting on AN, I feel tempted to delve into a little research, but I’m pretty sure such a topic has already been discussed thousand times by people who understand statistics much more than I do. On the other hand, I would probably get a heated discussion in my thread for once :)

Normally, flyballs pitchers will benefit from a home park with large dimensions like Target Field (especially considering how hard it is for lefties to hit HRs), but in the case of Slowey, it’s actually hurting him.
Ha.

which, while not terrific, was a full 1.33 lower than his tERA in 2009. That much improvement in one season from a 22 year old ain’t bad!

You could have a great understanding of all of the stats and scouting reports (and whatever else will help you evaluate a player) and still it would be inaccurate to state that Cahill will not have an ERA under 3 again. It may seem like splitting hairs when you are 99% certain of something, but if you can’t debate from a position that allows for that 1% (or simply that you may be wrong) then it sounds like you would like each post to only be commented on by ANers that agree with you. I certainly can’t tell you not to want that, but I definately can tell you that I don’t want that.

Personally, I think posts like the one you wrote can be great because they provide a good starting point to discussion. By using FIP as compared to ERA you can quickly create a group of pitchers with a similar statistical trait. But once we have identified that group I think additional analysis is necessary.

To be fair, I rarely write comments that include well researched baseball analysis. I read lots of analysis (lots) because I enjoy it. But right now I don’t aspire to become a great sabermatrician myself, so I don’t put in the time that it would take in my comments (you can call me lazy). But when I do write comments I accept critism with open arms because there is so much for me to learn. If I chose to counter that critism, then I will put in the necessary research time to be certain of my stance.

I would recommend the newer metrics that are more predictive.