Once again: FIP is flawed, but until I find tRA/*tRA or xFIP by month it’s what you get as a benchmark next to ERA!
Here’s the final wrap for the season. As you can see, the team took a big hit in September but that’s what happens when you’ve got Joba pitching bad and guys like Chad Gaudin just pitching.
Here’s the final tally for the season as a whole:
|
ERA
|
FIP
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Starters
|
4.48 | 4.31 |
|
Relievers
|
4.91 | 4.33 |
|
Full Staff
|
4.28 | 4.32 |
And just for fun, here’s 2008:
|
ERA
|
FIP
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Starters
|
4.58 | 4.05 |
|
Relievers
|
3.79 | 3.82 |
|
Full Staff
|
4.28 | 3.96 |
And before you cry oh God the pitching was so much better last year, how is that possible?
- Offense, as a whole, was down last year. That 4.28 ERA was good for 8th in the American League. After that, you start getting into the truly awful pitching staffs like the Orioles and Rangers. That 4.28 this year was good for 3rd in the American League.
- Reliever ERA and FIP is easily inflated by things like Jose Veras being awful for two months. This is why it’s useful to look at it broken down by month. It’s also only so useful to look at the entire bullpen which is often a revolving door of Anthony Claggetts. The important relief pitchers for the Yankees are: Mariano Rivera, Phil Hughes, David Robertson, Alfredo Aceves, Phil Coke, Damaso Marte. The righties are all good-to-excellent and the lefties kill lefties.
So there you go. Because of the demise of Chien-Ming Wang’s body and pitching ability, things didn’t go as planned and the staff isn’t as rocksolid as was hoped but it’s not terrible. The biggest issue I see in the playoffs is that AJ Burnett and Andy Pettitte both have consistency issues (and with AJ it’s more like will he be awesome or awful). If there were a way to ensure that the good versions would come out, I’m sure the Yankees would have looked into that but there’s not so let’s just hope the two faces act plays in the team’s favor.
[...] nice especially considering how bad Javier Vazquez has been. Compared to last year, it’s much much better. Thank you for a nice April, pitching staff. I expect them to come back to earth a bit when the [...]