Hitting the Foul Pole

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Liriano wishes he had a defense behind him

Last night Liriano struggled a bit — but those struggles merely highlight why he’s having a better year than you’d think based on a glance at his superficial numbers.

Sure, he loaded the bases three times. But do you remember how he gave up his only run? On a squib-shot off the end of the bat of Pierzynski that went foul down the third baseline, spinning wildly to the left, which somehow managed to take an abrupt right turn and die in the grass in fair territory.

In other cases, the bases got loaded up when Delmon Young dropped a line drive that was basically right at him and Valencia made a bad throw to first on an attempted sacrifice bunt. How did he handle that one? By inducing an easy grounder back to himself which he threw home for a double play — but Mauer didn’t throw to first. So how did he handle that? By striking out Konerko and Quentin in impressive fashion to escape the inning unscathed.

It’d be easy for Liriano to fail in these situations, when his teammates aren’t giving him any help. But it’s a sign of a good, mature pitcher who can overcome that sort of adversity. He may not have racked up the strikeouts or gone deep into the game, but he showed what can only be called “grit.”

You may not be impressed by his 3.26 ERA, but what about his league-leading 2.14 FIP? Here’s an awesome little list of the league leaders in FIP over the last ten years:

  • 2009: Zack Greinke (2.33)*
  • 2008: Tim Lincecum (2.59)*
  • 2007: Jake Peavy (2.84)*
  • 2006: Johan Santana (3.04)*
  • 2005: Johan Santana (2.80)
  • 2004: Randy Johnson (2.30)
  • 2003: Pedro Martinez (2.21)
  • 2002: Pedro Martinez (2.24)
  • 2001: Randy Johnson (2.22)*
  • 2000: Pedro Martinez (2.17)*

* Cy Young Award winners

So … yeah. Leading the league in FIP tends to indicate that you’re a great pitcher having a great season.

And I think it’s worth pointing out that Liriano’s FIP is lower than all of those.

Francisco Liriano is one of the best pitchers in the league this season; if his defense would give him any sort of support (his league-high .349 BABIP indicates that they’re not), he’d have a lower ERA and would be able to pitch deeper into games, which would convince people that he’s actually doing well.

But you don’t need that to be convinced, do you?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 7:40 am and is filed under Game Recaps, Statistical Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • FunBobby

    I’ve read somewhere that his xFIP, is a better indicator because he has gotten a tad lucky with that HR total. His xFIP is 2.95, so still excellent.

  • http://seans-sports.com Sean Schulte

    xFIP normalizes every pitcher’s home run rate to the league average. It seems to me that it’s only better than FIP if you have no reason to believe the pitcher is better than anyone else at limiting home runs.

    But I think it’s reasonable to believe that Liriano induces weaker contact — especially on fly balls — than most other pitchers. I do believe he’s gotten lucky on homers (seriously, only two all year?), but I think it’s pretty crazy to normalize his homer rate to the league average. Do we really think that Liriano should give up as many homers per fly ball as, say, Baker?

    You’re right, though. Even still, his xFIP is still amazingly good.

  • http://talkintwinsbb.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/friday-links-and-thinks-3/ Friday Links and Thinks « SethSpeaks.net

    [...] Hitting the Foul Pole wrote a tremendous blog showing just how incredible Francisco Liriano’s 2010 has been, and how unlucky. “You may not be impressed by his 3.26 ERA, but what about his league-leading 2.14 FIP?” [...]

  • rghrbek

    Good post. People think Pavano has been the ace this year. By people I mean the media, and almost all fans in general.

    Pavano has been good, a blessing, and has stopped a few losing streaks, and eaten innings.

    However, Liriano has been, and it’s not even close, the better pitcher. Pavano has been crazy lucky, where as you point out, Frankie has not.

    If Frankie could locate his fastball just a little better, and develop that change up, so he actually will throw it against lefties, then the walks would decrease and k’s would increase.

    I still am wondering why Mauer did not throw that ball last night (unless Rios was in the way, in which he should have been called out).

  • http://seans-sports.com Sean Schulte

    Rios was in the way — but it’s only interference if Mauer throws the ball. So he would have been out if Mauer threw it and it hit him.

    My guess is that Mauer was thinking about the runner on third scoring if he threw the ball at Rios to get the second out. The rule, I think, is that the play is dead once that happens. But would you trust the umpires to call that? I wouldn’t.

    But it would have been totally awesome if Mauer had throw at Rios, Liriano had retrieved the ball while the runner was trying to score from third, and Liriano got the ball back to Mauer for the tag. 1-2-1-2 triple play!

  • SteveLombardozzi

    That was a really, really good bunt by the Mummy..Valencia DID make the throw (yeah it was low) in time and O-Hud saved the day with a great scoop. Delmon is lucky he didn’t get blasted in the face Peter North style.

  • http://seans-sports.com Sean Schulte

    Um? Blasted in the face? By what, the ball? Or by Liriano?

  • http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-MIG-Weld-A-Guide-To-MIG-Welding-Techniques Elvia Moats

    I have read over a number of your current blog entries and I was thinking about if you wanted to swap web site links? I am continually hunting to switch links with personal blogs on comparable subject matter! I look forward to hearing back from you before long.

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