Judge: The return of Deserved Run Average in 2016
From Jonathan Judge at Baseball Prospectus on May 6, 2016:
The 2016 baseball season is underway, and now that we are a month into it, Deserved Run Average (“DRA”) is out of the gate as well.
Introduced last year, Deserved Run Average sets out to explain the runs a pitcher should have given up, rather than those that happened to cross the plate and be charged to him. (Because DRA relies on context, we have to wait a few weeks for that context to start establishing itself.) Other pitching run estimators tend to focus on the outcomes of plays, but DRA focuses on the likelihood that the pitcher was actually responsible for those outcomes. DRA does this by looking at the outcomes of each play in light of the particular players on the field, the type of event, and various factors that can influence those events, such as: stadium, catcher framing, temperature, and base-out state.
Much like the players it evaluates, DRA was determined to show up this year in the best shape of its life. And so we’ve made several changes under hood, some because they made the metric better, and others in response to feedback we’ve received.
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29119
Originally published: May 6, 2016. Last Updated: May 6, 2016.