The Final FIP Study of the Lions 2015 Rotation

Ken Togame epitomized the importance of utilizing FIP when analyzing pitching performance

It's been a long year of statistical analysis for this lover of sabermetrics, but it's been an eventful one and through this study, I've gained a newfound appreciation for being able to access all the information I need whenever I have an answer about any specific player.

For our loyal readers, I'm sure many of you think of me as the nerdy other guy on this blog, which I'll own up to it. I'm hoping there's a few of you out there who find some value in this series of posts, because it's certainly given me plenty of self-fulfillment. I'll be looking at Ken Togame, Wade LeBlanc, Kona Takahashi, Ryoma Nogami, Takayuki Kishi, Yusei Kikuchi, Chun-Lin Kuo and Kazuhisa Makita. We'll be looking at trends in ERA/FIP throughout the year, and I'll be trying to provide an answer for certain trends I've found.

For those who want a full explanation on FIP, here is our archived post. There is also a definition from FanGraphs. 

===

Yusei Kikuchi

Since he didn't start consistently starting games until we first started this study out in May, we only have two data points for Kikuchi.

	ERA	FIP
July 15	2.84	2.85
Final Total	2.84	3.07

Let's start about saying that I'm a huge fan of Yusei Kikuchi. In fact, I think when looking at his entire body of work for the whole season, he was far and away the best starting pitcher for the Lions. The talk around the Lions is that management is pondering moving him to the bullpen for next year. And I've been thinking about it a lot. In a 5 man rotation, I'd emphatically disagree with this type of chatter, but now I'm starting to wonder if Yusei Kikuchi's value is being undermined by only pitching once a week. I might have to do a post about this later on in the offseason, but my early inclination is that there's more value in keeping him in the rotation and giving yourself a great chance to win one game a week.

What's really interesting about Kikuchi is that he's good according to both metrics and that's with a concerning walk rate of 3.7 per 9 innings. He rarely gets taken out of the ballpark and he consistently invokes weak contact and makes hitters look silly. Finally, Lions fans are seeing the potential of Yusei Kikuchi coming to life. And he can only get better in the years to come as his control continues to improve.

Looking at his FIP vs ERA. It's weird seeing an ERA stay that stable, since usually it's the FIP that stays around a similar mark, and I just think that speaks to how good Kikuchi's season was this year. His FIP made a slight correction as we got down to the end of the year, which is normal for FIP, while his ERA stayed the same. His FIP projects more of the same success in the future if Kikuchi continues the same realm of form.

===

Ryoma Nogami

	ERA	FIP
May 20	1.98	3.05
July 15	3.35	3.73
Final Total	4.22	4.16

Simply put: Nogami's early season success was an aberration. Before the season started, the experts thought of the Lions rotation outside of Kishi as a bunch of back end starters. Unfortunately, statistical analysis supports this assertion for Nogami. FIP confirmed right away that Nogami was bound to regress as the season went along and that's what's certainly happened. Not surprisingly, the statistical correction occurred during the final 2 months of the season which is when pitchers will wear down. Please note that this was the 2nd highest seasonal workload for Nogami in his career, his highest was in 2013 when he threw 152.2 IP for the Lions.

There is value in Nogami and I don't want this to turn into a bash session, but there's always value in average pitchers who will throw a lot of innings and that's what Nogami brings. I expect Nogami to bring in decent back end rotation production next year for the Lions, the question is whether or not the Lions have too many guys like Nogami. This question will be answered over and over again since the Lions drafted eight pitchers in the recent NPB Draft.

===

Kazuhisa Makita

	ERA	FIP
May 20	2.08	3.16
July 15	2.73	3.28
Final Total	3.66	3.64

Once again, we see the end of the year correction that occurred in Makita's season. Makita throughout his career has shown through his career that he has the skills to outperform his FIP but a decent margin because of his funky submarine delivery that has a knack for invoking weak contact. It's only fitting that before his move to the bullpen, Makita's numbers were tremendous, after his move to the bullpen, it's clear that this move was a disastrous failure on many fronts.

I'm gonna go ahead and point to that as the blame for what took place in Makita's last two months. I think some regression in Makita's performance was bound to happen, but I think his move to the bullpen pushed him over the edge. Seeing that much of a drop in performance needs some extreme circumstance and that's good enough for me.

Hopefully management will learn and not use their past remembrance of Makita's year as a closer in 2011 as a way to sway them toward making more rash decisions about their bullpen. Makita is not the same pitcher as he was in 2011, therefore it's invalid. He's a good mid-level rotation guy and that's about it.

===

Takayuki Kishi

	ERA	FIP
July 15	4.15	2.81
Final Total	3.02	2.61

Ace Kishi was Ace Kishi this year. 

And if anyone is questioning the point of FIP, this is why it's valuable. To put through a better illustration, here was a graph of Clayton Kershaw's ERA/FIP through this past season. For those not familiar, Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher on this planet and at the start of the year, many so called experts were speculating that Kershaw was starting to regress. He then went onto have another great season, one that in many ways was the best of his career. Take a look.

Back on Kishi, he had a similar start to the year as the one that Clayton Kershaw had. He had a couple tough starts, but his FIP stayed firm and showed that it was only temporary. And once we got to the end of the year, it was clear that Kishi was not only brilliant this year, but he was also better than expected. And that's because Kishi improved his home run rate during this season. FIP predicts that Kishi will continue to be solid in the future, and there's no reason why he shouldn't be the Lions ace in 2016.

===

Ken Togame

	ERA	FIP
May 20	2.02	3.76
July 15	3.12	4.21
Final Total	3.55	4.16

It's only fitting that the pitcher who best exudes the importance of FIP is the pitcher with the largest sample size (152.0 IP). No one looked better during Kishi's absence than Ken Togame. His ERA beamed, he was striking out hitters at an all-time high, and maintaining a respectable walk rate. And as a result, he was a member of the Pacific League All-Star team this season. However, the writing was on the wall early on, and the writing only got bolder as the season went on.

I remember a particular conversation I had with Christian on the massive differential in ERA vs FIP. Christian gave his eye test saying that Togame was one of those guys who'd give up a home run and then he'd make it an anomaly.

In my midseason FIP post, I agreed with him to a degree. I think there are a few pitchers out there who can give up a lot of home runs and still be successful.

However, in that same post I concluded that his ERA would end up between 3.70 and 3.80. I was close, but notice how the FIP stays close to the same throughout the season, while the ERA fluctuates. Basically, Togame was pitching the exact same way through the whole year, but the home runs exposed a clear problem with him from moving up the ladder in the Lions rotation.

In my opinion, the amount of home runs a pitcher gives up, exposes a flaw in a pitchers game. Guys who give up a good amount of home run shows that they can be vulnerable and hit hard. And that's why it's such a big part of the FIP equation, where it punishes pitchers for giving up a lot of home runs. With the rate that Togame's home run rate was on, he just was not gonna be able to keep the same pace.

He was giving up the same amount of home runs during his All-Star pace, the only difference was that this time, he was seeing more baserunners find their way to the base paths. Those solo home runs were turning into killer, two-run and three-run bombs, which of course can be very problematic for your ERA and RA/avg.

All this information doesn't speak ill of Togame in any way, it just sets the record straight that the first half of the 2015 season was an aberration. If a fan just looked at the first half of the year, you'd think he was a front line guy, but that's not what he is, he's a good back-end rotation guy who eats a lot of innings, like Ryoma Nogami.

===

Chun-Lin "Kaku" Kuo

	ERA	FIP
May 20	4.91	5.34
July 15	4.53	4.98
Final Total	5.31	4.81

I'm not gonna make any bold statements on any of this.

Kaku Kuo struggled with his control throughout the season, but let's revisit this all in a year. Jury's still out. Plus, let's not make any rush judgments on 79.2 IP.

I saw flashes of good things from Kuo, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in his first professional season.

===

Wade LeBlanc

	ERA	FIP
May 20	3.43	5.43
Final Total	4.23	4.62

Not much to say here either that I already said in the last post from July.

Wade LeBlanc is a lefty with no real great pitch that defines who you are as a pitcher.

It wouldn't shock me if LeBlanc had really struggled with injuries all year, but even healthy, I don't think he would've been much more effective. The only times he found any real success came from double plays that bailed out his massive amounts of walks.

It was a failed foreign signing, but no harm done, it was just a one year flier. The Lions released him before the season was over in September. I certainly wish Wade the best with the rest of his career.

===

Kona Takahashi

ERA: 3.07

FIP: 4.47

This all comes from 8 starts and 44.0 IP and the kid is 18-years-old so again, I'm not going to dissect this to death. I will say though: Kona Takahashi was basically Wade LeBlanc, but a little better. So it's not too much of a stretch to say that it would've been a better idea to have him start the year in the rotation.

We'll watch Kona closely over the next couple years, his command needs to be ironed out of course and his command of his secondary stuff will be the next step after that.

Let me know what your thoughts are on all this. I'll have a separate post about Kikuchi in the bullpen for later.

===

Follow us on Twitter @GraveyardBall