The Futility Infielder

Satan, check your thermostat. At a time when my regard for ESPN's empire couldn't be any lower, Baseball Prospectus' Will Carroll called my attention to the fact that that ESPN's Sortable Stats now include pitchers' DIPS ERA (or dERA as it's sometimes called), as well as a stat called DIP% which expresses the ratio of DIPS ERA to actual ERA. Here's the DIPS ERA entry in their Stats Glossary:

A pitcher's ERA, independent of the defense behind him. This formula, based on essays by Voros McCracken, assumes that all pitchers have consistent BIPA (See Above), and adjusts accordingly. The DIPS ratios on ESPN use the DIPS 2.0 formula, are not park-adjusted, and do not adjust for knuckleball pitchers.

No link to the 2.0 formula is provided, but nonetheless, this is verrrrry interesting and useful. Among the other sabermetric stats listed are BIPA (Balls in Play Average, or what I've been calling Batting Average on Balls In Play -- BABIP) and Component ERA (ERC) which is an estimated ERA based on hits and walks allowed rather than runs but as Voros showed, wasn't as useful from a predictive standpoint.

Current leaders in DIPS ERA among qualifiers:

Pitcher         dERA

Randy Johnson   2.53

Ben Sheets      2.75

Roger Clemens   2.83

Curt Schiling   2.84

Carlos Zambrano 2.89

Jake Peavy      2.91

Matt Clement    3.05

Oliver Perez    3.09

Josh Beckett    3.20

Roy Oswalt      3.27

Dark thought: ESPN is stealing the stats from Larry Mahnken's Daily DIPS Report like they were (allegedly) pirating minor-league scores and statistics from The Sports Network. I might believe it if they were actually park-adjusted -- or if Larry's report were still up, which it appears not to be at the moment (I know he recently found an error and was planning to iron it out).

Anyway, this is very cool. One small step for sabermetrics, one giant leap for Jay's time spent doing other things in the offseason...