Once again it is time for another round of Drew Proof.  This week our player comparison series features a tale of two pitchers.  One is from Texas, the other from California.  One has played on four teams including one in Japan, the other has been on the same team his entire career.  Both of these hurlers are among the most added players in leagues across the nation—but one is clearly better than the other.  That said, here’s an anonymous set of stat lines showing how each pitcher has performed so far this year:

Pitcher A: 3-1 record / 44 K’s / 16 BB’s / 3.03 ERA / 1.14 WHIP / 38.2 IP

Pitcher B: 2-0 record / 24 K’s / 11 BB’s / 2.23 ERA / 0.99 WHIP / 36.1 IP

Currently Pitcher A, Colby Lewis, is owned in twice as many leagues as Pitcher B, Jeff Niemann.  Should he be?  Good question astute readers, but before you answer let me pose another question: how would you value each pitcher if you threw out the counting stats and focused only on the ratios?  More simply put, which pitcher is more effective?  While you ponder that let me provide you with the…

Drew Proof: The answer can be found using FIP.  FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching and measures how effective a pitcher is based only on plays that don’t involve fielders: things such as home runs allowed, strikeouts, walks; in other words things that are within the pitcher’s control in that fielders have no effect on the outcome.  Taking it a step further, FIP gives a more accurate view of a pitcher’s true ERA.  The formula for FIP is:

(13*HR)+(3*BB)-(2*K) divided by (IP) + 3.20

To save time, I’ve already calculated the FIP value for each pitcher using their career :

Lewis: 5.27

Niemann: 4.14

Based on the FIP numbers for these two right-handers, both are about 2 runs ahead of where their true ERAs reside.  But if both are pitching with about the same effectiveness, which one should you add to your team?  The answer is Niemann.  And when you put their career stat lines together and add in FIP as I did below it isn’t even close:

Lewis: 15-16 record / 199 K’s / 140 BB’s / 6.15 ERA / 1.71 WHIP / 5.27 FIP / 256 IP

Niemann: 17-8 record / 163 K’s / 78 BB’s / 3.75 ERA / 1.31 WHIP / 4.14 FIP / 233 IP

Not only does Niemann have a better K/BB ratio, his career ERA is actually lower than his career FIP.  This interesting factoid shows that Niemann is much more effective over the course of a season than Lewis—and even though Lewis can get you K’s it will come at the expense of your team’s ratios.

As always, I write these articles to provoke thought—please feel free to post your comments.  See you next week!

Tags: 2010 Fantasy Baseball, Colby Lewis, Jeff Niemann, Pitcher