View image | gettyimages.com I love FIP. Or at least I did until xFIP came along and improved the predictive power of defense-independent pitching statistics (DIPS). Because home run rates generally fluctuate from year to year, xFIP applies a league average home run rate to all pitchers, which makes xFIP

View image | gettyimages.com I’ve spent a long time avoiding evaluating starting pitchers. I suppose it beats evaluating relief pitchers, but otherwise it’s a pain in the tookus. The standard numbers are so volatile that basing your predictions on those numbers makes little sense. Yet, when you compare the sabermetric