Many times a player will spend the whole season beating the odds. Look at players from 2008 like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Gavin Floyd, Joe Saunders, Milton Bradley or Javier Vazquez. I like trying to find why that happened as sometimes there is an explanation for the odds swinging for or against them.
Daisuke Matsuzaka - We all should know by now that Dice-K was a poor pitcher last year and his FIP of 4.03 was generous by his luck on HR/FB. His FIP should have been near 5 and he was lucky in many ways, but how did a pitcher with a K/BB of 1.64 and a GB% of 38% get an ERA of 2.90?
We all can see the luck in BABIP, LOB% and HR/FB. They didn't have enough innings to regress to the mean, but is that the only reason? In this case yes. He got a little better in August and September, but his K/BB for any one month was never greater than 2.14 in September. Dice-K was so lucky and his regression was delayed by number of innings.
Gavin Floyd - Floyd is one of my favorites, because I found this the day before the last day of 2008. His splits against lefties are extremely poor, but against righties he is very good. This was the day before he faced the Detroit Tigers who are stacked with righties and he won the game. He finished with 1 ER, 8 strikeouts and only 2 walks.
If you look at Floyd's career his K/BB against righties is 2.46, but was up to 3.23 in 2008. On the other hand he has a K/BB of 1.23 against lefties which only increased to 1.39 in 2008. This keeps any regression he was seeing in the second half very slow. Eventually the law of averages will even out, but as long as his splits are so unbalanced towards righties he can be expected to be slightly better than his FIP. This seems to be the case as his career ERA is 4.98 and his FIP is 5.40. Of note Bill James calls for an ERA of 3.98 and a FIP of 5.14.
Joe Saunders - Saunders beat a FIP of 4.36 last year with his final ERA of 3.41. He did this by luck in BABIP and LOB%. He also had a low HR/FB, which could have sent his FIP higher, but pitching in the AL West helps keep that down. I also see an interesting split in HR/9 between left handed and right handed hitters. I cannot see his GB% rate against lefties, but his HR/9 against lefties has been stellar during his career.
This seems to be another factor in slowing any regression to the mean. His career numbers show this too. He has 38 homers against by right handed hitters, but only 3 against lefties. To put this in perspective he gives up a homer every 42 PAs against righties and goes 100 PA between homers by lefties.
Milton Bradley - Bradley was one of those guys who is now overvalued due to an amazing season of BABIP luck. His career BABIP is .323, but in 2008 he had a .388. He got a lot of luck all around, but he is usually much better against lefties, but this year his BABIP spiked against righties. This really is not maintainable, but as long as he tops out at 400-500 ABs each year it's tough for his numbers to balance out.
Javier Vazquez - I covered him in my Player Profile this week at FantasyPros911.com due out Thursday.
