best pitchers in al/nl in 09

[kickureface]

who are they and why? what stats are most important? do not consider the team, just the player. doesnt have to be just 1 from each league.
k/bb, k/9 and hr/9 is commonly discussed whereas w, era and whip are more team based. what about ops against, gb%, fb%, etc?

[Neato Torpedo]

The answer to both is Jeff Mathis.

On a related note, we have both NL and AL Cy Young topics a bit lower than this one, where there is already a lot of talk on who the best pitcher of '09 was.

[kickureface]

oops youre right.

how about the second part- what stats are most important in evaluating a pitcher?

[Neato Torpedo]

Either xFIP or tRA*. The conversation begins and ends there.

[BitterDodgerFan]

read the AL CY thread.... and draw your own conclusions.

and yes, mweir is mentall ill.

[kickureface]

Either xFIP or tRA*. The conversation begins and ends there.

can you explain the terms a bit? i actually read about these but never really got its significance.

i read about FIP but not xFIP and had enough trouble getting that formula
tRA is the replacement pitcher term? what's the star for?

[mweir145]

and yes, mweir is mentall ill.

And apparently so is Keith Law.

[mweir145]

Either xFIP or tRA*. The conversation begins and ends there.

can you explain the terms a bit? i actually read about these but never really got its significance.

From THT:
xFIP: Expected Fielding Independent Pitching. This is an experimental stat that adjusts FIP and "normalizes" the home run component. Research has shown that home runs allowed are pretty much a function of flyballs allowed and home park, so xFIP is based on the average number of home runs allowed per outfield fly. Theoretically, this should be a better predicter of a pitcher's future ERA.

tRA info: http://www.statcorner.com/tRAabout.html

[Ender]

K, BB and GB% are the things most in control of the pitcher. BABIP, LOB% and HR/FB are all stats that jump all over the place year to year making small samples of ERA unreliable.

I tend to start with xFIP which you can find on www.hardballtimes.com and then just look and see if the pitcher has some sort of career ability to be better or worse than his xFIP suggests.

An example of such a player is Trevor Hoffman. His ERA is pretty much always better than his xFIP so there is no reason to expect that to change. The reason being is he is just really good with runners on base and except for 2008 he has shown an ability to limit HR much above what one would expect from his GB% and FB%. This happens with a lot of closers btw.

The problem with most composite stats are they are not personalized, you really should be regressing things towards a pitchers career rates or at least his last 3 year average and not some arbitrary value.