Cleveland Sports Forum

SIERA

Skill-Interactive ERA (SIERA) is the newest in a long line of ERA estimators. Like it’s predecessors FIP and xFIP, SIERA attempts to answer the question: what is the underlying skill level of this pitcher? How well did they actually pitch over the past year? Should their ERA have been higher, lower, or was it about right?

But while FIP and xFIP largely ignore balls in play — they focus on strikeouts, walks, and homeruns instead — SIERA adds in complexity in an attempt to more accurately model what makes a pitcher successful. SIERA doesn’t ignore balls in play, but attempts to explain why certain pitchers are more successful at limiting hits and preventing runs. This is the strength of SIERA; while it is only slightly more predictive than xFIP, SIERA tells us more about the how and why of pitching.

Here’s what SIERA tells us:

Strikeouts are good…even better than FIP suggests. High strikeout pitchers generate weaker contact, which means they allow fewer hits (AKA have lower BABIPs) and have lower homerun rates. The same can be said of relievers, as they enter the game for a short period of time and pitch with more intensity.

Also, high strikeout pitchers can increase their groundball rate in double play situations. Situational pitching is a skill for pitchers with dominant stuff.

Walks are bad…but not that bad if you don’t allow many of them. Walks don’t hurt low-walk pitcher nearly as much as they hurt other pitchers, since low-walk pitchers can limit further baserunners. Similarly, if a pitcher allows a large amount of baserunners, they are more likely to allow a high percentage of those baserunners to score.

Balls in play are complicated. In general, groundballs go for hits more often than flyballs (although they don’t result in extra base hits as often). But the higher a pitcher’s groundball rate, the easier it is for their defense to turn those ground balls into outs. In other words, a pitcher with a 55% groundball rate will have a lower BABIP on grounders than a pitcher with a 45% groundball rate. And if a pitcher walks a large number of batters and also has a high groundball rate, their double-play rate will be higher as well.

As for flyballs, pitchers with a high flyball rate will have a lower Homerun Per Flyball rate than other pitchers.

Finally we have a stat that A) is accurate and predictive, and B) accounts for some of the complexity of pitching.

Context:

SIERA is on a similar scale to ERA, so any score that is a good ERA is also a good SIERA. Please note that the following chart is meant as an estimate, and that league-average SIERA varies on a year-by-year basis. To see the league-average ERA for every year from 2002 to the present, check the FanGraphs leaderboards.

Rating SIERA
Excellent 2.90
Great 3.25
Above Average 3.75
Average 3.90
Below Average 4.20
Poor 4.50
Awful 5.00

In general, relief pitchers have lower SIERA scores than starting pitchers. As a handy shortcut, a pitcher that switches from starting to the bullpen will on average see their SIERA drop by 0.37 points (and vice versa).

Things To Remember:

● Interested in calculating SIERA yourself? Good luck. But if you want to try, here’s Matt Swartz’s formula and explanation.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/new-sier ... ng-skills/

● As always, when evaluating pitchers, it’s best to use multiple statistics instead of relying on one alone. While SIERA is the most accurate of the ERA-estimators, it’s only slightly more accurate than xFIP. Both xFIP and FIP still have their uses, so I wouldn’t recommend ditching them entirely and using only SIERA — a balanced approach is always best. You can learn a lot about a pitcher by looking at which metrics like and dislike them, and for what reasons.

● In and of itself, SIERA works as well as many projection systems in terms of predicting a player’s future ERA. But be careful of this distinction: SIERA is technically a backward-looking ERA estimator and not a forward-looking projection system. If you want to turn SIERA from an estimator and into a projection, you can follow the general formula laid out by Matt Swartz in this piece.

● SIERA is park-adjusted, meaning it adjusts for the fact that some pitchers play in PETCO Park and others in Yankee Stadium.

●SIERA is updated for the new (low-scoring) run environment around the majors.

that's simple enough

I see Justin Masterson was DFA.

Good non-signing the Tribe FO

Boy did he collapse quickly! All Star to nowhere in two years -- without an arm injury.

A guy with a 3.46 ERA should have a better record than 7-12. The former is a better indicator than the latter of how well he is pitching.

don't need no steenkin SIERA

a couple of those non-wins were his own fault when he didn't hold hold-able leads. several were because he didn't get any runs. the former category have disappointed me. an ace should win whenever he gets ahead by 3 runs. the others are just the luck of the game.

seagull wrote:I see Justin Masterson was DFA.

Good non-signing the Tribe FO

I wouldn't be surprised to see him in an Indian uni again.

Zack Meisel @ZackMeisel:
Carlos Carrasco's last three starts:
26 innings
7 hits allowed
3 runs allowed
2 walks
22 strikeouts
Good lord.

Carlos had a couple pretty impressive 3-start stretches last year too although not quite that good:

His 3 first starts when returned to the rotation with a limit on his innings:

18 innings 7 hits 2 walks 1 run 17 strikeouts 0.50 ERA 0.50 WHIP

His final 3 starts of the year when all circuits were firing:

24 innings 13 hits 5 walks 3 earned runs 31 strikeouts 1.12 ERA 0.67 WHIP



He can be quite an overpowering pitcher. It's hard to sustain that incredible level of success, but he'll always be a possibility for an All Star and a Cy Young season with his stuff and command and growing poise.

How's that change of scenery going?

Swisher 1-10

Bourn 1-10

Johnson 7-9

seagull wrote:How's that change of scenery going?

Swisher 1-10

Bourn 1-10

Johnson 7-9

Yeah, but Johnson didn't do the Tomahawk Chop like Swish did on his one hit!

Interesting info on Almonte and Johnson from a fantasy site:

Abraham Almonte & Chris Johnson: Deep League Wire

by Mike Podhorzer - August 12, 2015

The trade that jettisoned both Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher opened up opportunities for two players to make some sort of impact in deep leagues. So today is an all Indians edition of the deep league waiver wire.

Abraham Almonte | OF CLE | CBS 2% Owned

With Bourn shipped out of time, the question became who would replace him in center field. The Indians lacked any viable options as the list of hitters who manned center field for any number of innings this season was underwhelming. It included names like Mike Aviles and Tyler Holt, along with Michael Brantley who is the team’s regular left fielder. So the cellar dwelling Indians decided it was time to dip into their farm system and called up Almonte.

Almonte is 26, so he’s no longer really a prospect. But you might remember him as an interesting sleeper in deep leagues heading into the 2014 season. He won the starting center field job with the Mariners, was set to hit lead off, and possessed some power and above average speed. He always posted good walk rates and struck out at acceptable, though perhaps slightly worrisome for his level of power, clips. Sadly, Almonte flopped, was soon demoted back to the minors, and then sent off to the Padres where he rebounded some, but didn’t have much opportunity for playing time.

After a stint with those some Padres earlier this season, he’s now back, and surprisingly handed a starting role. He has yet to show the intriguing power he displayed back in 2013 at Double-A and Triple-A with the Mariners, but he’s not a zero there. And he still has speed. It’s certainly not flashy, but his career stats extrapolated over 600 plate appearances yields 11 homers and 10 steals.

Of course, that comes with just a .242 batting average, even with an inflated .321 BABIP. But there are reasons to think he should improve on that ugly career strikeout rate of 27.1%. His career 10.3% SwStk% is only marginally worse than the league average and he has been swinging more often, which should help his strikeout rate, though possibly at the expense of his walk rate. Strangely, he had issues swinging at pitches inside the zone in previous years, but his Z-Swing% has surged this year. He should continue to swing at pitches inside the zone, because, ya know, if he doesn’t, they will just be called a strike anyway.

With no clear barriers to playing time at the moment, some power and speed, he’s an attractive pickup in what could very well be a barren free agent pool in your league.

Chris Johnson | 1B/3B CLE | 3% Owned

This is the so-called prize the Indians received in that salary dump trade mentioned in the intro. Yes, this is the same Johnson who batted .321 in 2013 thanks to a crazy high .394 BABIP. Johnson has played nearly as many games at first base this year as third and figures to rotate with Carlos Santana (who will DH when he’s not manning first) and Jerry Sands for playing time at the position. If he hits, he may very well earn the lion’s share of that playing time for now. But will he?

A .394 BABIP by itself sounds absurd. Especially when it’s posted by a guy that clearly isn’t benefiting from his speed. But Johnson actually owns a career .357 BABIP and his career low mark is still a solid .317. That’s because his batted ball profile is superb. He sports a career LD% of just a touch over 25% and has popped out just 15 times throughout his entire career. He also uses the whole field. So we should continue to expect an inflated BABIP.

The problem of course is three-fold. And these are serious problems that render players with such weaknesses as reserves or minor league fodder. For one, as a corner infielder, Johnson has a serious lack of power. He has posted ISO marks of .170+ twice, but sits at just .134 for his career. Okay fine, so he’s James Loney, and he seems to always have a starting job. Except that along with the lack of power, Johnson rarely walks. And he swings and misses a lot, which result in strikeouts. So really, about the only thing going for him offensively is that shiny BABIP ability.

But hey, with a high BABIP comes hits and managers still like batting average, right? Johnson owns a .281 career mark. Hits could knock runners in and hits put you on base to be knocked in. Speaking of knocking, I’ve knocked Johnson a lot. I’m not very confident that he’ll even be given any more than an occasional start in a couple of weeks. But there’s an opportunity now and the Indians will want to see what they got. So might as well take the plunge if you’re starving for offense.

Gomes throwing out Gardner

http://m.indians.mlb.com/news/article/1 ... 6104914520

Johnson looked more like the flop I guess he is yesterday. single with no one on and hit into 2 doubleplays including one with the bases load.

This still looks like the core of a potentially good team: some extremely talented and often very successful starting pitchers, probably four of them. Some very solid young relievers. Now suddenly add to that excellent defense at some prime positions. All we need is LOTS MORE offense. Or maybe not that much more, since offense is not that big a deal in baseball these days. Once Zimmer arrives we get a top-notch defender in Right who really is one of those rare "5 tool" players. The next season Frazier fills CF and he might be nearly as good. That solves everything, right?