2020 MLB Draft Guide: Beyond ERA: FIP, xFIP & SIERA

As we enter 2020, the game of baseball is ever evolving. Gone are the days where you can look at the back of a player’s baseball card and see he had a good year and take it for face value. In today’s day of information and analytics we can now see that a player had a good year and begin to identify why that player was so successful or in some cases not successful at all. When it comes to pitching the easy stats to look at are ERA (earned run average), WHIP, (walks + hits/ innings pitched) wins, losses, strikeouts and walks but what if I told you there is more to it than that. What if there were other stats that could help you identify whether a pitcher was getting lucky or rather unlucky while on the mound and that those stats can and should be used when preparing for your upcoming fantasy baseball draft? Well then let me introduce you to the life beyond ERA and into the sabermetric world of FIP (Fielding Independent pitching), xFIP (Expected Fielding Independent Pitching) and SIERA (skill-interactive ERA).

FIP- Fielding Independent Pitching

Sabermetrics have completely taken over the way we look at statistics in baseball and they have become ever so important in the world of fantasy baseball as well. The sabermetric stat FIP is defined as a measurement of a pitcher’s ERA over a period of time if that player was to experience the league average in BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play). This number ignores the role of defense and by using the league averages BABIP it diminishes any good or bad batted ball luck the pitcher may have had. Instead it focuses on the walks, strikeouts, hit batters and home runs that the pitcher may record while in the game. Fantasy owners can often look at a pitchers ERA and compare it to their FIP and see if any sort of correction, good or bad, will be coming their way. Should you find that a pitcher’s ERA is much lower than their FIP it is safe to assume they are getting relatively lucky when it comes to run prevention, whether it be solid defense behind them or favorable batted ball luck.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see the names Scherzer, Cole and deGrom at the top of this list as they are perennially among the top pitchers in baseballand last season was no different even with the increased offense in the MLB they still managed to be rather dominant. Morton and Buehler each took big steps forward in 2019 with Morton proving the Rays correct in signing him away from the Astros during the offseason and Buhler continuing to prove he is the new “ACE” of the Dodgers rotation.  Now, you may have noticed that three of the pitchers on this list actually have higher ERA’s than their FIP. This would indicate that they actually got a bit unlucky during the season. Scherzer for example ranked 8^th in ERA while leading in FIP and Buehler was 14^th in ERA while ranking 5^th in FIP. Now, of course FIP is not the end all be all when trying to determine the upside of a starting pitcher, but when it comes to fantasy baseball this is one of my favorite stats to look at. It helps me identify some potential bargains on draft day. Pitchers who last season got rather unlucky but if the law of averages ends up on their side in 2020 they could certainly contribute to a fantasy staff. A pitcher that I think could be in for a better season based off his FIP is Noah Syndergaard .

Syndergaard had himself a down year in 2019 with increases in ERA, FIP, xFIP and SIERA from the prior season. There is no denying that he was not pitching at an elite level, but I think there were some contributing factors to his poor numbers and that had to do with the extreme increase in home runs hit last season. The MLB has all but admitted that they changed the baseballs in 2019 which led to many pitchers giving up career high home run totals and Syndergaard was no different as his HR/FB rate nearly doubled going from 7.8% to 13.3% between 2018 and 2019. The word heading into 2020 is that the MLB may again adjust the baseballs after the number of complaints received last year and if that too is true then maybe we see a version of Snydergaard closer to 2018 this season than we did in 2019. Currently he is being drafted as SP21 with an average ADP of 69.0.

xFIP- Expected Fielding Independent Pitching

So, you just had your introduction to FIP so now let’s get to xFIP shall we? The main difference with xFIP compared to FIP is that xFIP considers the league average home run to flyball ratio and applies that. As we said before FIP likes to normalize BABIP well, xFIP likes to take the pitchers HR/FB ratio and standardize it towards the league average of 10%. In this instance if a pitcher had a HR/FB ratio at less than 10% they were likely on the luckier side of the coin than those who had a HR/FB ratio greater than 10%.

In 2019 no pitcher had worse luck when it came to the home run ball than the Cubs starter Yu Darvish as he gave up home runs on a league high 22.8-percent of the flyballs he allowed. Now sure, Wrigley Field can certainly lead to some increased home run balls when the wind is blowing out, but assuming the league average is 10%, than we are seeing Darvish allow a home run at over double the rate per fly ball. Now there were some other issues with Darvish that contributed to his tough season and most of that had to do with his first half of 2019. If you were a Darvish owner you more than likely cut bait by the All-Star break if not sooner and if that was the case then the lucky soul who picked him up may have rode him to a playoff berth. Let’s wind back to that first half I was talking about. In 97 innings he had a 5.01 ERA while allowing 20 home runs with an insane 11.4% BB-rate. He walked 49 hitters over 97 innings during the first half of the season. The combination of putting runners on and then giving up home runs does not do a pitcher good. There was a rather encouraging sign about his first half, the strikeout totals, which gave some hope that with better control he could go back to dominating hitters. Dominating hitters is how I would define his second half. Darvish figured out the control problems, walking just seven hitters over the second half of the season which for him spanned 81.2 innings. His BB-rate dropped to 2.2% and his strikeout rate jumped to 13.0 K/9. His stuff was filthy and when it was around the plate the hitter’s couldn’t really touch it. The home runs were still a bit of an issue but everything else came back to earth for him. He finished his second half with a 2.76 ERA with a 2.83 FIP and 2.37 xFIP. Like Noah Syndergaard , Darvish is being taken just outside the top 20 starters, coming in as SP22 with an average ADP of 70.3 and both could be in for bounce back 2020 campaigns.

On the flip side of Darvish we have someone like Jeff Samardzija who had the biggest differential between what their ERA was and what their xFIP suggested they pitched to with a 1.50 run difference between the two. Samardzija was incredibly lucky as he had a lowly 6.95 K/9 but a stellar .240 BABIP which helped keep the runs scored down. If you are looking at some likely regression candidates heading into 2020 then just take a look at the list below.

Now FIP and xFIP are certainly great indicators when it comes to identifying starting pitching but there is one more stat worth looking into and that is SIERA…

SIERA- Skill-Interactive ERA

While not as popular as the other two, SIERA may actually be the most important ERA predictive stats because, as it says in the name, it measures the pitcher’s overall skill. To quote the SIERA article on FanGraphs, “SIERA attempts to answer the question: what is the underlying skill level of this pitcher? How well did they actually pitch over the past year? Should their ERA have been higher, lower, or was it about right?” 

The top leaders in SIERA should be no shock to anybody as they were among the top pitchers in baseball this past season but there is clearly one name that stands out and that is of Indians starter Shane Bieber . Bieber took a leap in 2019 and maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise to those who paid attention to his peripheral pitching stats from 2018.

Bieber finished 2018 with an ugly 4.55 ERA but he had an incredibly high BABIP at .356 which surely would indicate some better ball luck was coming his way. His FIP, xFIP and SIERA also indicated that he was pitching much more like a starter with an ERA in the 3.30 range than the mid-fours. So what happened in 2019? His BABIP dropped to a league average .296 and his ERA dropped to 3.28 which was much in line with his 2018 sabermetric stats indicated and his 2019 sabermetric stats showed that his production was no real fluke either. Heading into 2020 there is no discount here with Bieber as he is being taken at SP9 with an average ADP of 25.3. 

The goal here is to identify who will be this year’s Shane Bieber ? Who will be the 2020 breakout pitcher whose FIP, xFIP and SIERA are indicating that a possible breakout season could be upon us? How does Braves southpaw Max Fried sound to you? Fried checks the boxes that we are looking for here in my opinion. First, his 4.02 ERA was matched by a 3.72 FIP, 3.32 xFIP and a 3.83 SIERA. His HR/RB rate was the second worst in baseball at 20.2%. His BABIP was also the second worst in baseball at .336. Those are two factors that to me scream a correction could be coming, especially if the MLB is going to adjust the baseballs to be less hitter friendly in 2020. Other positive stats from Fried in 2019 was his 9.40 K/9 which ranked him among the 25 starters in that category. His 2.55 BB/9 also wasn’t a terrible number either. Fried is currently being drafted as an SP41 with an average ADP of 134 which is the 13^th round in 10-team leagues and 11^th round in 12-team leagues.  Great value for a possible breakout starter this year.