Evaluating Advanced Pitching Stats

Evaluating Advanced Pitching Stats.

I was trolling around espn.com today, and I decided to take a look at some pitching statistics through the first 2 weeks of the major league season. Now, In my mind, ESPN can seem like a very frilly and superficial website at some points, but in this instance their statistics were very interesting. I just wanted to review a couple of the more interested metrics that can used to evaluate a pitcher. In my opinion, baseball General Managers would be well served to pay attention to all of these metrics before giving contracts and paying for players.

1.     Average Game Score (information taken from Wikipedia)

Average Game score can be computed by using the following steps:

1. Start with 50 points
2. add 1 point for each out recorded
3. add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th inning
4. add 1 point for each strikeout
5. subtract 2 points for each hit allowed
6. subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed
7. subtract 2 points for every unearned run allowed
8. subtract 1 point for each walk

At the end of all of this MATH! you will have the Game Score for that particular pitcher and that particular start. I love this metric because it allows us to tell the difference between two stellar pitching performances, and it gives us an easy way to rank pitchers if we average a season's worth of game scores together.

2.     Pitches Per Inning Pitched

This statistic obviously measures the average amount of pitches that any given pitcher takes to get through an inning. This may seem like a pretty boring stat, but it is incredibly important when you talk about longevity for a starting pitcher or a reliever. In this day of strict pitch counts and increased concern for pitcher health, it is incredibly important to a lot of teams that their pitchers conserve pitches. If a pitcher takes 25 pitches on average to get through an inning, he will most likely only throw 4 innings, perhaps 5 at the most.

            I heard a few commentators mention the other night on TV that pitchers need to trust their defense. They have 7 men playing on the field behind them, and it is important that a pitcher not be afraid of contact. Even the best hitters only have success 30-35 percent of the time. 70 percent of the time the fielders behind that pitcher will be successful in getting a batter out. If a pitcher will pitch to contact some of the time, he can help to keep his Pitches per Inning number low, thus staying in the game longer.

3.     Quality Starts

I am interested in this statistic for a couple of reasons. One, just like the Game Score, this helps us understand when a pitcher is actually being effective for his team. Two, one of my fantasy baseball leagues has started to include Quality Starts and OPS in the rotisserie style scoring, moving to a 12 category league instead of the ESPN standard 10 category.

            A Quality start is achieved when a pitcher goes at least 6 innings, giving up 3 runs or less. A pitcher who achieves a quality start gives his team a better chance of winning the ball game.

            One criticism of this metric is that it can be very unfair in certain situations. For instance, a pitcher could pitch a complete game and give up 4 earned runs and not earn a quality start. That seems to be more valuable than 6 innings and 3 runs, but would not fall under the category. Despite its flaws, this is still a useful measuring stick to judge pitching performance.

Unfortunately, there are still one very prominent sabermetric measure that ESPN does not use. ERA+ is an interesting evaluating tool, very popular among baseball statisticians, that I would like to see on their website.

Do you have a favorite advanced statistic? Do you even enjoy looking at stats?