Is Jordan Zimmermann one of the best 10 pitchers in baseball?

[scotty216brs]

There is not much more to his ERA. Luck, defense, blah, blah, blah....yes, different things COULD have happened, but didn't. Fourth in the majors in ERA and you are trying to rain on his parade. Not sure why.

I'm not saying he is the best pitcher in baseball this season, but he is easily one of the most consistent. Just this month in 37 innings he had an ERA of .97 (~And only an 18% LD rate!!!!11111!1~)

 

[chompsmcgee]

It actually does matter because the underlying numbers show the real truth. Single season ERA can be extremely flukey and really doesnt tell the whole story. Zimmermann has had a really good season and doesn't walk anybody, but the ERA is a mirage. He is a groundball pitcher that gives up line drives 22% of the time, but has a BABIP of around .265. He has a really high strand rate of 84%, as mentioned earlier. Getting ground balls and not walking guys are great ingredients for a pitcher, but the other numbers dont really line up. For his fielding independent pitching numbers, his FIP is 3.4, his XFIP is 3.6, and his SIERA is 3.7, which are all extremely solid, but not elite numbers. The ERA might not normalize itself this season, but if Zimmermann gets the same batted ball results, he will give up more runs and his ERA will eventually reflect it.

Great post! Saves me the trouble of posting the same statistics. Unfortunately, the casual fan still evaluates pitchers through simplistic (and misleading) statistics such as ERA and wins. While ERA is a easily digestible statistic it is often overused to draw incorrect conclusions from. FIP, xFIP, strand rate and BABIP tell much more of the story of what a pitcher actually has control over and if he's generally been lucky or the product of great defense.

Zimmerman is an excellent pitcher but advanced metrics (what the sophisticated teams use to evaluate along w scouting) show Gio Gonzalez is easily the better pitcher both this year and historically.

Your excellent use of proper metrics is not lost on everyone in this forum, sir.