Judge: DRA and the Ervin Santana disagreement

From Jonathan Judge at Baseball Prospectus on May 29, 2017:

As you know, different pitching estimators tend to agree on which pitchers are good and which ones are not. The interesting cases are when they disagree—strongly. In those situations, the proper response is not to decide which one is “correct” (to the extent there is such a thing), but rather to look at why they disagree.

On a related note, people have recently asked for us to do more explaining of how Deserved Run Average (DRA) works. Often, it’s easiest to do that with an example.

Today, our example is Twins right-hander Ervin Santana. Santana has a 1.80 ERA, a 1.80 RA9, a 4.00 FIP, and a cFIP of 102, but a DRA of 2.74. He is striking out 6.4 batters per nine innings, walking 3.5 batters per nine innings, and giving up just under one single home run per nine innings.

ERA and RA9 suggest an extraordinary pitcher; FIP and cFIP see an average pitcher, and DRA sees him somewhere in between, as a very good, but not-as-good-as-his-RA9 pitcher. Why the difference in opinion?

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=31930



Originally published: May 30, 2017. Last Updated: May 30, 2017.