Expected ERA

Finding pitchers due to improve

Some of Byung-Hun Kim's numbers were misleading last year, and that he's due to improve. Tom Hauck/Allsport

By Jason Grey, Special to CNNSI.com

"Professional baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way. If one or the other does not happen, bankruptcy stares every team in the face."

So, who is it? Bud Selig? Jeffrey Loria? Tom Glavine?

Nope, it's the owner of the Chicago White Sox ...

... the 1881 owner of the Chicago White Sox ...

This quote is from Chicago White Stockings owner Albert Spalding, 1881. Some things never change, eh?

Welcome to my first column of the year for CNNSI.com. By way of introduction, I have been a fantasy baseball writer here for the past three years, and my goal has always been not just to provide analysis of baseball players for fantasy purposes but strategy help and tips as well. Hopefully we can not just provide you with information about the fantasy impact of Johnny Damon's move to Boston, (HUGE, by the way -- he's a $30 player again), but help you become a better fantasy player in the process.

Where did I come from? What are my credentials? Well, I happen to have run a free fantasy baseball Web site called the Masters of Fantasy Baseball at www.mastersball.com for the last five years. Daily news, insight, analysis and opinion are available there. And we even have our 2002 annual and projections, how about that? After you have devoured every single piece of information here at CNNSI.com, you may want to point your browser over there and check it out. Go ahead, I won't be offended.

OK, enough of that -- you want some information you can use in your draft, right?

Today we are going to talk about Predicted or Expected ERA's and how you can spot some pitchers who are better or worse than they seem.

We know that there are things out of a pitcher's control that affect his ERA. Most notably, who among us has not cringed when we see our starter put two guys on to lead off the seventh, and then watch his relief come in and give up a three-run bomb? Because of situations like this, ERA is not necessarily truly representative of a pitcher's effectiveness. There are a couple of different formulas that people can use to figure out an expected or predicted ERA.

My fellow Tout Wars participant Mat Olkin introduced a simple, easy-to-use version. You multiply the pitchers' Opponent On-Base Percentage times his Opponent Slugging Percentage, and then multiply that by 31. (Don't ask me why it is 31, it just is, and it works.) That will pretty much tell you what a pitcher's ERA SHOULD have been, based on how well he pitched, how well batters were hitting him, and throwing out other factors such as the quality of his bullpen, how many runners they stranded, and how poor the defense behind him was.

Essentially, after that is figured out, one can look at the difference between a pitcher's actual ERA and what it should have been, and figure out pitchers who: 1. were better than their numbers showed and should have their ERA drop in 2002, or 2. were worse than their numbers showed and should have their ERA rise.

In many cases there will be little or a negligible difference, but it is in the case of wide spreads in either direction that we should pay attention. Probability tells us that eventually these pitchers, if they continue to pitch the way they have been, should have their ERA move closer to where it should be, as their luck will eventually even out given enough of a period of time.

When looking at the spreads, if you want to run these numbers yourself, you should treat any difference of 0.50 in ERA or better as significant. You also need to make sure that the pitcher pitched enough innings to make that difference meaningful. I don't care about the ERA spread if the pitcher only threw 30 innings. Anything over the 60-70 innings range you can probably take a look at seriously. Also, if a pitcher had an ERA in six range, and his expected ERA was in the five range (an example is Omar Olivares), I don't care how big the spread is, you don't want him. That should be pretty obvious.

With that in mind, here are some pitchers you should probably bump up a notch or two on your draft board, based on some ERA's that were misleading and not indicative of how well they pitched. We'll discount the Osvaldo Fernandez's and Amaury Telemaco's of the world, for Omar Olivares reasons as described above. However, do keep your eye on:

Byung-Hun Kim, AZ
Brandon Duckworth, PHI
Robb Nen, SF
Brad Penny, FLA
Matt Clement, FLA
Eric Gagne, LA
Terry Adams, PHI
Pedro Astacio, NYM
C.C. Sabathia, CLE (if they don't pitch his arm off)
Hideo Nomo, LA
Matt Anderson, DET

Conversely, be a little more wary of:

Darryl Kile, STL
Jon Garland, CHW
Dustin Hermanson, BOS
Jose Mesa, PHI
Antonio Alfonseca, FLA

An interesting side note, is that there were four Pittsburgh Pirates that made my "better than the numbers indicate" list, which shows you how horrible the Bucs defense was last year. It may have been the worst defense I've seen in the last 10 years. Olivares was on that list, but more importantly, Jimmy Anderson and Todd Ritchie (now with the White Sox) were on that list. Anderson could be a good sleeper in deep leagues this year. Josias Manzanillo was on the list as well, and with Mike Williams managing to get on the bad side of the list, that could make things interesting come June in the Pirates bullpen, as Manzanillo is not eligible to rejoin the Pirates until May 1st. Williams has to be considered a shaky closer at best.

So there you have it. You may see it referred to as Expected or Predicted ERA. Foolproof? No. Another great tool to have at your disposal to try and figure out the enigma that is major league pitching? Absolutely.

Jason Grey is the publisher of The Masters of Fantasy Baseball at www.mastersball.com, a free daily source for news, analysis, insight, and opinion. Their 2002 annual featuring strategy and player profiles as well as their 2002 projections for various game formats are available now. Mastersball.com is a member of the Tout Wars and Major League Baseball's experts leagues.

 

Related information
Multimedia
Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call your cable operator or DirecTV.