Category Archives: Analytics

For the most part in the eyes of a general baseball fan, gold gloves, fielding percentage and number of errors is how a player is judged defensively. However, if one goes into more depth of fielding stats, the value of a player’s glove can be measured intensely. One stat that does that quite well is called total zone total fielding runs above average (Rtot). Rtot is a calculation that roughly measures how many runs, above or below average (average being 0), the player was worth saving. For example, back in 1998, Derek Jeter had an Rtot of 2, which means Continue reading How Many Runs Does Each Defensive Player Save→

Bill James and his Sabermetric crew developed so many different stats starting in the 1980’s, and a lot of them are looked at and evaluated, but one advanced stat that stands out in discussions, is wins above replacement (WAR). The true definition is: the number of additional wins their team has amassed relative to the number of expected team wins if that player was substituted by a replacement level player; according to Sabermetrics. WAR is an attempt to sum up a player’s total contributions to his team. Besides WAR, there is runs created, BtRuns, OWn%, etc., that also help contribute Continue reading WAR?→

Fielding Independent Pitching (or FIP)  is a metric designed to give us information about pitcher performance. FIP measures the events that are directly under a pitcher’s control: strikeouts, walks, and home runs. From there, a calculation is used to scale these events to a number very similar to the one you’ll find for ERA. It is a “rate” statistic, that resembles how many runs a pitcher might give up per nine innings, given these peripherals. So basically it is a pitcher’s ERA if the team’s defense is not factored in. When looking at how well a pitcher’s season went, don’t Continue reading What is “FIP” and why is it so important?→