FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) is a measurement for the pitcher. It looks at the things he can control. The pitch. Consider this, you are driving on a country road , minding your own business, driving the speed limit or less…and WHAM! a deer runs in front of you and you hit it and your car is smashed. The driver didn’t do anything wrong. It just happened. The same can be said about a pitcher. They throw the ball but have very little control of the outcome.
We aren’t saying they have no responsibility for their pitch. Some they can control and that is where we we find the measure of FIP comes in handy. FIP is a better measurement than ERA to pitchers.
What is FIP?
A pitching measurement similar to ERA but focused only on the events a pitcher has most control over, such as strikeout, intentional walks, hit by pitch and home runs.
Why Use FIP?
Because it limits the inputs strictly to the events a pitcher has most control of. ERA is subject to the official scorers ruling to create an outcome and an inattentive defense can cause on field issues.
FIP Chart of Effectiveness
Excellent 3.20
Great 3.50
Above Average 3.80
Average 4.20
Below Average 4.40
Poor 4.70
Awful 5.00
History of FIP
Voros McCracken developed this idea but had some challenges in getting others to accept it and then Tom Tango took over and got it into the mainstream of sabermetrics measures.
FIP leaders
2020- Yu Darvish 2.07
2019- Max Scherzer 2.64
2018- Jacob de Grom 2.44
2017 – Stephen Strasburg 2.45
Check out the Sabermetric and Analytics Library at Baseball Spotlight
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup.
Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
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