Third Basemen - Shortstops - Outfielders 1 - Outfielders 2
Starting Pitchers 1 - Starting Pitchers 2
For the pitching side of my sabermetrical analysis of the 2011 fantasy baseball season, I chose the following statistics: ERA, FIP, BABIP, BAA, K/9, LD%
If you aren't familiar with any of those statistics, I'll explain them a bit.
Earned Run Average (ERA): This is probably the most common pitching statistic in the majors today. It is simply the average amount of earned runs a pitcher allows per 9 innings he pitches. A good number is in the 2's or lower 3's, average is mid 3's to to low 4's, and anything above the mid 4's isn't too great, especially for a pitcher on your fantasy team.
Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP): I've written about this stat on this blog before. FIP is a number like ERA, except it takes out factors that the pitcher can't control, such as defense and park factors. It uses home runs allowed, strikeouts, and walks and gives each pitcher an adjusted ERA.
Batting Average to Balls In Play(BABIP): We used this statistic in the hitting posts too. BABIP simply takes the total amount of balls put in play against the pitcher (not including home runs), and finds out the percentage of those balls that went for hits. The big league average for BABIP is right around .300, so if a pitcher has a BABIP above that, it shows that he was unlucky in getting outs on balls that were put in play, and vice versa. A high BABIP shows the pitcher might have been better than his numbers (specifically batting average against) shows, and a pitcher with a low BABIP shows that the pitcher might not be as good as his numbers suggest.
Batting Average Against (BAA): This is exactly what it sounds like, it's the percentage of hits that batters get against the pitcher per number of at bats. More simply, this stat shows us the batting average that all the batters that faced him had in a given year. Just like batting average, something around .260 is average, anything below that is and anything over .290 is a bad sign for a pitcher.
Strikeouts Per 9 (K/9): This one is very simple as well. It is simply the number of strikeouts a pitcher records per 9 innings he pitches. The big league average is between 7 and 8, so you'll be looking for something around or above that in a fantasy pitcher.
Line Drive Percentage (LD%): We used this statistic in the batting analysis as well. Line drive percentage shows us the percentage of batted balls against a pitcher that were hit as "line drives". Basically it shows us how well batters hit the ball against a pitcher. A good pitcher draws weak contact, which is shown in this statistic. A high line drive percentage shows that the pitcher was getting hit hard, which never leads to good things.
So we'll use these statistics a long with some others I throw in in certain cases to evaluate the pitchers for the 2011 fantasy baseball season. To figure out what pitchers we can expect to perform better in 2011 than 2010, the ones who have higher draft value, we'll compare their ERA to their FIP, look at how high their LD% is, check out the comparison between their BABIP and BAA, which can show us if they were lucky or unlucky the previous year, and use all these stats together to try and make some predictions. The first of 2 posts for fantasy starting pitchers will be up either later tonight or tomorrow, so be sure to check back for that.