You know how occasionally some crotchety old baseball writer or one of the idiots on Around The Horn will pad their insipid argument with something along the lines of “Players don’t care about these newfangled stats. They just want to go out there every five days and throw strikes. You really think Zack Greinke cares about his VORP, FIP, ZAP or whatever it’s called?!?” Well, archetypal sports curmudgeon, you’re wrong. Zack Greinke will FIP you. He will FIP you Fo’ Real!:
Via:
Bannister said Greinke has learned to adjust his pitching based on the advanced defensive statistics. Because of the size of the outfield at Kauffman Stadium and the strength of the Royals’ outfielders, relative to their infielders, it sometimes made more sense to induce fly balls.
“David DeJesus had our best zone rating,” Bannister said, referring to the Royals’ left fielder. “So a lot of times, Zack would pitch for a fly ball at our park instead of a ground ball, just because the zone rating was better in our outfield and it was a big park.”
To that end, Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors.
“That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Greinke said.
Moral of the story: don’t watch Around The Horn. Or listen to old people.
