Posted by Brian Joseph on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 2:25 am

Fielder Independent Pitching (FIP) is used by many in the world of Sabermetrics to point toward a pitcher due for a turnaround or ready to crash and burn. Last year more than any other in recent memory has an interesting group of FIP flaunts thanks to a trio of talented rookies (and David Hernandez) who all grossly outperformed their FIP in ‘09.

Of the pitchers with a minimum of 100 innings pitched, here are the Bottom 10 of ‘09 ranked by ERA-FIP:

There they are! J.A. Happ, Randy Wells and Rick Porcello, already laughing in the face of FIP in their rookie season. For the record, Baltimore’s David Hernandez is a rookie, too, but it’s hard to laugh with a sore neck and Hernandez’s 5.42 ERA and 2.4 HR/9 is enough indication to assume the guy has a bad case of whiplash after his rookie “effort.”

The bottom 10 in ‘09 featured an array of pitchers beyond the freshman class including FIP roller coaster Kevin Millwood (E-F as high as 1.05 in ‘04 and ‘08 and a career-low of -1.13 in ‘09), back-to-back bottom 10 man John Lannan and frequent FIP offender Bronson Arroyo. A shadow of doubt were also cast on the excellent seasons of Jair Jurrjens, Matt Cain and John Danks thanks to their ERA/FIP gaps.

But what’s it all mean, really? While FIP (or it’s cousins xFIP and tRA) are often the phone-a-friend on “Who Wants to Predict a Pitcher Flop?”, pitchers tend to be more unpredictable than Kanye West at an awards show. In an attempt to find linkage between those who heftily outperform their FIP only to come crashing back to Earth the next season, the bottom 10 from ‘99-’08 was looked at and analyzed to see if there was any insight on how Happ, Wells and Porcello would follow their FIP-busting rookie performances.

Here’s a look at the last 10 seasons of bottom 10 ERA-FIP performers and how they performed the following seasons:

1999: Using 100 innings as a cut-off and requiring a minimum of 100 innings in the following season removed a handful of players from each season as noted at the end of each graphic beginning with the ‘99 one. With the exception of Rick Helling, the bottom 10 saw their ERA increase from season to season (as well as their FIP) and 6 of 10 exceeding their previous year’s FIP. Although a large majority of the pitchers from ‘99 took a step backward ERA-wise, only Kevin Millwood and David Cone failed to eclipse their corresponding year’s FIP. Of the 100 pitchers looked at in the bottom 10, Cone had the biggest increase of ERA from year to year as he followed his FIP busting 3.44 ERA performance of ‘99 with a FIP inflated 6.91 ERA in ‘00. That’s more than double!

2000: Unlike ‘99, the ‘00 group continued to outpace their previous year’s FIP with the exception of Brian Anderson and Bruce Chen. Like ‘99, the ‘00 group followed up their FIP busting seasons by continuing to beat their FIP with the exception of Rob Bell and Frank Castillo. Freddy Garcia’s ‘01 ERA was 2.08 runs lower than his ‘00 FIP but his ‘01 FIP was nearly that much of a reduction, too.

2001: Again, 8 of 10 pitchers continued to outperform their previous year’s FIP while only half saw their ERA stay under the current year’s FIP. Anyone writing about FIP before the ‘02 season who targeted Tom Glavine for a drop-off ate their words as not only did Glavine crush the previous year’s FIP, his 2.96 ERA was 1.24 runs better than his ‘02 FIP of 4.20.

2002: It was a rough follow-up in ‘03 for the FIP busters of ‘02 as it was nearly an across-the-board outpacing of the previous season’s ERA. Even back-to-back FIP buster Glavine saw the gap between ERA and FIP close as his 4.52 ERA was only slightly better than his 4.74 FIP in ‘03 and 0.32 runs higher than his ‘02 FIP. Again, more than half of the group continued to outperform their FIP in the following season. Zito’s ERA/FIP gap didn’t stop the BBWAA from awarding him the AL Cy Young.

2003: Only 3 of the bottom 10 saw their ERA jump to their previous year’s FIP and 8 of 10 continued to play FIP buster. Most notable were Jake Peavy and Steve Trachsel who had near identical ERA-FIPs in back-to-back seasons. Look for Peavy again in the ‘04 bottom 10 and for Trachsel in the footnotes as he failed to accumulate 100 innings in ‘05 thus excluding him from the ‘04 bottom 10. In case you missed Brian Anderson, he’s back in the bottom 10 and like his follow-up effort to his ‘00 FIP busting ways, Anderson’s ‘04 ERA was above 5.

2004: There’s Peavy who continued to blow away his FIP and produce impressive ERA’s. Finally, in ‘05, Peavy fell in line with his corresponding FIP but still bested his previous year’s FIP by roughly a quarter of a run. The rest of the list was mostly misses as not only did half of the list perform worse than their previous year’s FIP, 6 of 10 failed to outperform their current year’s FIP which was mostly a rarity in these bottom 10s.

2005: This list mimicked ‘04 in a lot of ways: Clemens was similar to Peavy and 8 of the 10 saw their ERA jump above the previous year’s FIP. If there were a season to cherry pick statistics from to prove an ERA well below FIP means future disaster, this was the one. The average bottom 10 performer of ‘05 had an ERA of 3.21 and followed that up with a 4.90 ERA in ‘06.

2006: A return to the norm, sort of, with 9 of 10 pitchers in the bottom beating their FIP in consecutive years. In addition, only 4 pitchers saw their ERA jump above their previous year’s FIP and only one, Woody Williams, were more than 0.08 worse than their previous year’s FIP. The gap was again bridged with these pitcher’s ERA jumping 0.52 runs but still 0.49 runs below their previous year’s FIP and 0.37 runs below the current year’s FIP.

2007: With the exception of the implosions of Kyle Kendrick, Fauto Carmona and Livan Hernandez, this group continued to best both previous year’s FIP and current year’s FIP. A consistent theme in looking at the bottom 10 pitchers of each year — ERA goes up but not as high as FIP gave indication it might. To this group’s credit, half of the pitchers not only bested their FIP, they also improved upon their FIP flaunting ERA of the previous year.

2008: Another split down the middle when it came to follow-up performance compared to FIP. Notice John Lannan’s first of two straight appearances (he’s also in the bottom 10 of ‘09). Why is he noteworthy? Pitching for one of baseball’s worst defenses in ‘08 and ‘09 did not help keep Lannan’s FIP down although neither had a major impact on his ERA in either season.

A total of 100 pitching seasons made up the list with a handful of multiple appearances. Of those 100 pitching seasons:

• 65% posted an ERA better than their current year’s FIP in the following season
• 52% posted an ERA better than their previous year’s FIP
• 45% improved their FIP
• 18% improved their ERA

When taking the group as a whole, FIP looks impressive:

From season to season, FIP remains somewhat consistent for the 100 pitching seasons looked at with just a 0.03 run increase. However, the gap between ERA and FIP closed from -0.99 to -0.13. This was despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of the list continued to best their FIP in the following season.

If only following year’s ERA and previous year’s FIP are compared, the results were nearly split when the two were compared. For nearly every pitcher that bested his previous year’s FIP by more than a run there was one whose ERA skyrocketed to more than a run higher than his previous year’s FIP.

So, what does that mean for our trio of rookies? Few, if any, expect the trio to match their ‘09 performance, especially in the case of Happ. Using data only taken from these bottom 10 pitchers, here’s a graphical representation of what to expect from the three in their sophomore seasons.

First, Happ:

There should be little reason, if any, to think Happ will match his stellar 2.93 ERA of ‘09 based on this data. Only about 15% of the pitchers reviewed showed that type of improvement from season to season. Expecting any of the three pitchers to see their ERA jump more than a run higher than their previous year’s FIP is pushing it but that still only narrows down any projection to between 3.33 and 5.33 for Happ.

Next up, Wells:

Wells has a better shot at posting the same ERA as he delivered in ‘09. About 30-35% of the pitchers reviewed showed that type of improvement which would also likely be accompanied by a reduction in FIP year over year. Should Wells blow up, he’s still likely to post an ERA under 5 and if he shines, it’s perfectly within the realm of possibilities that he could improve on his ERA from ‘09.

Finally, Porcello:

Porcello is similar to Wells in that both have a better chance to best their previous year’s ERA than Happ. The bigger concern in the case of Porcello is the high ceiling on his ERA in the most pessimistic of cases. Young pitchers have shown the ability to continue to outperform their previous year’s FIP at alarming rates like 23-year-old Jake Peavy in ‘03 and 23-year-old Jesse Litsch in ‘07 but for every Peavy and Litsch there’s a 21-year-old Zack Greinke (‘05) and 24-year-old Fausto Carmona (‘07) to prove that age is just another number.

The unpredictability of pitchers, no matter how much data is available, makes it tough to nail down how any pitcher will perform from year to year. FIP is a nice starting point but still makes the projections less black-and-white and more a shade of gray with a fairly large margin of error if that’s your only piece of evaluative data. Even in the case of our trio of rookies, it’s somewhat likely that one of the three implodes or explodes on a dramatic scale based solely on their FIP performance in ‘09. Since there’s really no rhyme nor reason in the data analyzed above when grouping those who imploded and those who exploded, the easiest way to decide for this writer will be to throw David Hernandez in the mix and go with him.

Sometimes it’s just better to hedge your bets.

Photos courtesy of http://www.picapp.com/