So, in other words, some pitchers can out perform these measurements like Buehrle has throughout his career. Meaning: Buerhrle is better than Hutch and Estrada.
No not really. Someone who is proven to be able to outperform a 4.5 FIP by a half a run to a 4 "FIP level" pitcher isn't better than someone who has a 3.5 FIP. The 3.5 guy is better.
It's just some pitchers like Dickey and Buehrle have proven over their careers, their ERA is better than their FIP by a certain amount. So you can't always look directly at the FIP and say the 3.5 guy is a full run better than the 4.5 guy.
And this year, in particular, Hutch has been extremely unlucky and Estrada has been very lucky.
Estrada has been pretty lucky, his xFIP is awful, Dickey level bad. Over a run and a half worse than his ERA, and while his FIP isn't nearly that bad, his HR/FB has been well below his career norms, he's been very homer prone in his career, and hasn't been this year which I suspect isn't going to continue
I suspect with Shaipro here now they won't go near Estrada with a 10 foot pole
At what point does the luck factor leave the equation? Is there any way to measure that?
FIP and xFIP tries to measure a pitcher ignoring luck, and defence. It's not perfect, and like the case with Buehrle and Dickey it's possible to be able to sustain a ERA better than your FIP and xFIP, but it's the best way to measure a pitcher where luck doesn't come into play
At some point, don't you have to look at it and say: "Estrada has been better than Hutch this year." Meaning, in those big moments Estrada got the double-play grounder, and Hutch gave up the double that made things worse.
Clutch tends not to exist. Given enough of these opportunities Estrada isn't going to get that double play more often than Hutch unless he's a ground ball pitcher which he's not. If both Estrada and Hutch have the ball put in play, it's considered luck that Estrada got the double play and Hutch gave up a double. Given enough time they'll both given up the double and get the double play as often as each other(granted if one is a groundball pitcher he might get the double play more often)
When I look at the various stats I see this: ERA is a measurement of what happened, but it can be misleading because sometimes what happened isn't what should have happened. FIP is a measurement of what could have been expected to happen, which - again - can be misleading because what could have happened isn't always what happens.
I guess my central question is this: why has Buehrle out performed what his expected results are and Hutch hasn't?
in 1 situation, in 1 game, who knows what's going to happen, it's an extremely small sample size, you can't really guess what you expect to happen in that 1 spot, but over 5 years you should be able to look at a pitchers FIP or xFIP and say his ERA should be pretty close to that.
Over a year that's not the case, the only thing you can really call, it is luck. Over all the situations Hutch has faced this year, if we give him average ball placement off the bat, he wouldn't give up as many runs. It's weird to explain, but yeah he's given up more runs that one would expect him to.
The best I can say is Buehrle has outperformed because he's been a little lucky(not a lot, his numbers are only ~0.7 worse than his ERA and we've already said he has shown he's about to outperform by ~0.4 over his career), and Hutch has been horribly unlucky.
I wouldn't use it as a be all end all, and Hutch has a slightly higher line drive % this year which could explain a little of it(because line drives are more likely to go for hits), but he's been a full run worse than his FIP, and unlike Buehrle we don't have enough career data to say he's usually worse than his FIP.
