Quote:
Originally Posted by Barka
Thanks for the info!
What is the best way to judge batters and pitchers?
Currently im looking at the past 3 seasons AVG and OBP for batters
Pitchers I look at ERA
Is that right?
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For a beginner, it's a good start, yeah. You've got the right idea. OPS+ is a good one, because that compares the players OBP and SLG (ie, OPS) to the rest of the league that year, with 100 being average, over 100 being above average, below 100 being below average. That tells you not only how good the player was, but how much better/worse he was compared to the rest of the league.
For pitchers, ERA is a good starting point but the problem with it is that if you're a great pitcher in front of a terrible defence, your ERA will probably be higher than an average pitcher in front of a great defence. For more information on how good the actual pitcher is doing, you'll need to look at the stats he controls himself: HR/9, BB/9, K/9. Or look at FIP (fielding-independent pitching), which combines those for you into a format that can be read like an ERA.
For a modern MLB league, HR/9 (home runs per nine innings) should be low, for a 'good' pitcher: definitely under 1.5 and ideally under 1.
BB/9 (walks per nine innings) should be under 2.5 (around 3-4 isn't terrible if he strikes out a LOT of guys to make up for it).
K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings) will vary a lot depending on the type of pitcher. Under 6 is almost always a disaster, but some guys just aren't strikeout pitchers and so won't have huge K/9 totals, but can still be useful (these guys will have a much lower BB/9 though, as they rely on control to get through games). Over 9 K/9 is good for a guy who relies on strikeouts. Double figures is great. But plenty of excellent pitchers hover around 7 K/9 because strikeouts aren't their main goal.
But yeah, comparing FIP to ERA will generally give you a good measure of the type of team he's on. High ERA, low FIP = a good pitcher on a bad team. The scale is slightly different though. 3.0 ERA is pretty good, but 3.0 FIP is amazing. 3.anything FIP is good.
WHIP is also a good measure of a pitcher's ability - especially for relief pitchers, where ERA is next to useless (they pitch limited innings, of course, so one bad game where they give up a few runs will ruin their ERA for weeks). WHIP measures Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched, and thus usually a more trusted measure of how good a pitcher is than ERA. Under 1.0 is fantastic, under 1.2 is good. 1.4 is 'eh'. Anything above 1.5 and you're getting into problem territory.
Also check out
BABIP. As a really, really brief and generalised rule of thumb:
If a pitcher's BABIP this year is a lot
lower than it has been in previous years, he's probably getting a bit
lucky and you shouldn't rely on him to continue being as good as he is (assuming, of course, he's doing well).
If a pitcher's BABIP is a lot
higher than it has been in recent years, he's probably getting
unlucky and you can expect him to improve (again, assuming he's doing badly).
The opposite is true for batters (higher BABIP than normal = lucky, vice versa).
BABIP measures Batting Average on Balls In Play. It tracks the outcome of any ball that's put into play (ie, a batted fair ball that isn't a home run). .300 is around average in modern MLB. Lower than that means that a higher than average percentage of batted balls in play result in outs (which is good for pitchers, bad for hitters). BABIP higher than .300 means that a lower than average percentage of batted balls in play result in outs (good for batters, bad for pitchers).