turnin' two

Fair enough. If he can even get a late season call up to Charlotte, that should be considered a win.

And yet, despite this being his 3rd crack at AA, he is younger than pretty much every other hitter in Birmingham right now except Eloy (and actually younger than a few guys in W-S). It seems like he has been around forever, but maybe he is putting it together. If nothing else, he has at least made himself another interesting guy to look for in the box score each night. You'd like to see more walks and fewer K's but he does seem to be hitting for more power. He had 25 XBH last year in Birmingham in 419 PA, this year he has 11 in 120. I think that is some reason for optimism.

Ah, yes, my bad. Thanks for the correction.

And despite skipping WS, Jameson Fisher hasn't been overwhelmed by playing in AA.

I am curious as to what information this opinion is based. He is slugging .500 with 14 XBH. All while playing at about a year and a half younger than the league.

I'm not sure these guys have much in the way of sources in the Sox. I don't seem to remember anyone connecting the team with Burger last year, I guess I just take it all as worth a grain of salt and mostly as educated guessing and entertainment.

In that particular case (and boy do I hope it is real so I can see the outcome...) I would just happen to guess that this pitcher is outperforming his FIP. The K's and HR/9 rate look pretty good, the walks are high. The walks are too high. They are something that just looking at, you say, he has to fix that or it is going to cause him problems. I would guess a guy like that would have a FIP of about low to mid 3 or so.

Great article. Thank you for posting it. Really a lot of great stuff in there and Mark was truly one of a kind. I have to say that this, though: " A pitcher who doesn’t throw hard, and doesn’t have a gimmick pitch, and doesn’t strike out a lot of batters, can’t be a successful starter in the major leagues. He might be able to do it once with a lot of luck, but he can’t do it year after year after year." is a really funny statement in an article that also references Tom Glavine.

Holy Crap. That is unbelievable.

He is sure living up to this.

https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/xfip/ Again, I don't see it in there. It uses a league average HR/FB ratio. Averaged, not park factor.

This is the purpose of FIP, from fangraphs. "FIP is an attempt to isolate the performance of the pitcher by using only those outcomes we know do not involve luck on balls in play or defense; strikeouts, walks, hit batters, and home runs allowed. Research has shown that pitchers have very little control on the outcome of balls in play, so while we care about how often a pitcher allows a ball to be put into play, whether a ground ball goes for a hit or is turned into an out is almost entirely out of their control." So no, not exactly.

Where is park factor baked in? https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/fip/ I don't see it anywhere.

Well, the thing that makes it superfluous is that if you look at a guys stats, you not only see Ks, but also BBs. So the relationship is right there for you. https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/fip/ FIP uses homeruns. xFIP uses flyballs https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/xfip/ I guess I just don't see the use for it. It seems to me like having a stat for the sake of having a stat to talk about. It isn't anything groundbreaking or, at least in my opinion, revealing.

There are plenty of outliers. Buehrle picked off 100 guys in his career. That equates to about 6 per year. That seems like a stretch to say it is a major factor. His defense was great. He made on average 11 putouts per season. So he equated for 17 puts per year with his defense and pickoffs. I don't know. Seems like kind of a stretch to me. I guess I would like to see the article though.