So what explains the ERA - FIP difference.  Based on the nomenclature I assumed defense, but since Wang has the lowest ERA-FIP spread so far that can’t be doing most of the work.

CMW’s ERA-FIP has been cited as possible evidence for a qualitative difference in gb hit off him - that he’s not just an extreme gb pitcher but an extremely fieldable gb pitcher.

CMW’s ERA-FIP has been cited as possible evidence for a qualitative difference in gb hit off him - that he’s not just an extreme gb pitcher but an extremely fieldable gb pitcher.

Or, depending on Wang’s rather dramatic home-road split in all his pitching stats, including BABiP, some people have credited Yankee Stadium ground stuff to let the grass grow on the infield for Wang’s starts that makes a difference in his FIP ERA difference. Take your pick.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I’d heard [2] before but not [3].  Makes sense though.

Opening Day lineup today (except for P obviously).

I wonder about his away split excluding astroturf.

So, about the new mlb.tv, the picture quality is actually pretty good, BUT ...

you need one of those duo core 3+GB RAM CPUs, even with the Windows XP. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem to function smoothly at the highest quality.

Well, Fukudome is kind of brutal in CF.

I wonder about his away split excluding astroturf.

Yeah, it is far from scientific, plus, the FIP splits are not available anywhere, to the best of my knowledge, but it seems to be a decent hypothesis worth investigating.

OK, Nady with his reaching for every single pitch out there is kind of annoying me.

Soriano crushing Pettitte is kind of annoying me.

Yay! Posada guns down Theriot!

Wow! Yankee Stadium is going to be a hitter’s park?

WTF.  Save it for the season dammit.

Rich Harden is topping out at 90 mph? That’s odd.

Yankee Offense looking good. I find the thesis regarding the demise of Derek Jeter pretty ridiculous. He was playing with an injured hand last season that sapped his gap power. Skeptics point to this and say he’s heading for a fall. But if his physical skills were really decreasing, why did he have his best defensive season since the nineties? Jeter will have his usual stats in ’09, so long as he is healthy. But to say he is in legitimate decline based on one injury plagued season is just misguided. Also, you have to keep in mind that Jeter will never age. Neither will I. Nope. Not happening. 

14. Yeah, I thought that it was odd that he was topping at 90 in his playoff start. Perhaps, after all the injuries, he’s trying a different approach, not airing it out on every pitch. His change is so good that he could probably be effective, even with that severe drop in velocity. Not today, though. It could just be that his arm is bothering him and he’ll try to pitch through.

Dear Yankees, the regular season has not started yet.  Thanks.

Tex!

The Yankees not following Yogi’s logic this exhibition season.

If this over-priced ballpark turns out to be a hitters park - yuck.

Seriously, I’m predicting that they’ll be all worn out from swinging and running that we’re about to return to WOE.

You had to mention WOE!

So what explains the ERA - FIP difference.  Based on the nomenclature I assumed defense, but since Wang has the lowest ERA-FIP spread so far that can’t be doing most of the work.

A few things.  Defense is one, as you mentioned.  Also, in general, FIP assumes that pitchers have little impact on balls in play.  That’s not really true, it’s just that it takes a big sample size to discern the difference. 

Also, there are pitchers who consistently outperform their peripherals(Mark Buehrle is one example).  So when you are projecting, you don’t want to regress BABIP all the way to league average because you want to make sure you are not penalizing people who have demonstrated an ability to pitch better than their peripherals.

Conversely, for a young player, you don’t necessarily want to assume they can suppress BABIP more than they’ve demonstarted so far.  They need to show that they have sufficient skill in the area to remain in the majors.

So depending on the system, they will generally calculate ERA on a few different factors.  For CAIRO, I use:

1) Actual ERA
2) Actual RA
3) Component ERA (basically linear weights of all the events a pitcher allows converted to batting runs)
4) FIP
5) tRA

So you could have a FIP that diverges fairly significantly from ERA depending on the factors and weights you use.

Ok, something must be the case with the YES guns. Burnett is topping out at 91.

This Burnett fellow seems to be pretty good.

So, who is doing the game chatter for opening day? SG? Jonathan? Keith (where is he, BTW)? Larry?

I should be able to liveblog opening day.

This lineup looks so much better without Alex.