Posted by Jtpsops on 8/16/2016 1:27:00 PM (view original):
I just had a debate with someone about Zach Britton and he used SIERA to show that Britton is only the 5th best reliever in baseball this season - despite the fact one of the pitchers ahead of him only has 16 IP, and Britton is leading all relievers in H/9, WHIP and ERA.
Generally speaking, a formula like SIERA is another reason why sabergeeks infuriate me. It heavily weights Ks and essentially writes off outs in play as luck. A pitcher's job is to limit baserunners and runs. It's clear that Britton is the best reliever in baseball this year, but the saber crowd needs to go find some complex formula to illustrate why he's NOT the best in baseball.
Mariano Rivera was the best closer ever - yet he rarely led in SIERA (if he did at all) and never topped 10 K/9. According to a metric like this, a lot of relievers were more effective than him. How do people defend that?
And for everyone's reference, the convoluted formula used to calculate SIERA is as follows:
6.145 - 16.986*(SO/PA) + 11.434*(BB/PA) - 1.858*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) + 7.653*((SO/PA)^2) +/- 6.664*(((GB-FB-PU)/PA)^2) + 10.130*(SO/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA) - 5.195*(BB/PA)*((GB-FB-PU)/PA)
I think Britton has been awesome and think it's probably disingenuous for someone to downplay how good he has been by using SIERRA.
That being said, if you were trying to answer a different question...maybe, "how good will Britton be next year?" it makes sense to look at things like his almost 90% strand rate (kinda high, probably a little lucky), his walk rate (kinda high for an elite reliever), his strikeout rate (low for an elite reliever, but not his weapon, groundballs are), and his BABIP (low especially because he gets so many outs on groundballs) and think that maybe things regress for him going forward.
8/19/2016 3:18 PM (edited)