Fielder-independent pitching (FIP) is a cool stat that seems to have gained quite a bit of traction. It only looks at a pitcher's walks, strikeouts, hit-by-pitches, and home runs allowed, and spits out a number that is on the same scale as ERA. In the same way I've flipped wOBA (an offensive measure) to look at "pitcher wOBA" in the past, I was curious what these fielder independent events would look like applied to hitters. It certainly gives a limited picture, but is kind of a cool sketch of a hitter's strikeout and walk discipline combined with his home-run power. Here's how the Royals hitters looked in 2010 (higher the better for hitters, AL average was 4.14):
5.01 Wilson Betemit
4.97 Kila Ka'aihue
4.70 Billy Butler
4.52 Jose Guillen
4.34 Alex Gordon
4.18 Alberto Callaspo
4.14 Yuniesky Betancourt
4.04 David DeJesus
3.87 Rick Ankiel
3.77 Mike Aviles
3.59 Mitch Maier
3.46 Scott Podsednik
3.40 Wee Willie Bloomquist
3.39 Jason Kendall
3.24 Gregor Blanco
3.18 Chris Getz
3.07 Brayan Pena
Here's the formula I used:
((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP-IBB))-(2*SO))/(Outs/3)+3.11
Outs/3 is to match "innings pitched" used in FIP. 3.11 is a constant added to bring the number to the same scale as ERA.
