The Mariners management is truly inexplicably bad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coach Owens

xFIP is built to guesstimate the future value. FIP on its own can assess a pitcher's past value just fine.

No, it can't. The ONLY difference between xFIP and FIP is that xFIP normalizes the home run component. Otherwise, it's exactly the same. xFIP is better for predicting the future than FIP is, but neither assess value.

They are meant to assess how the pitcher pitched, regardless of the defense behind him. This is useful for predicting future performance. However, the hits allowed by a pitcher play a huge role in his value. If a pitcher pitches 182 innings, and his ERA is 7% better than league average, he provided solid value that season, regardless of his peripherals. If he had poor peripherals, you shouldn't expect him to give you that same value in the future, but that does not affect his past value.

Jarrod Washburn is in ways a lot like Tom Glavine-lite. He routinely outperforms his FIP numbers.

Either way, these pitchers we're discussing are all clearly better than 5th starters, so long as you're discussing it in terms of the actual production teams get out of the 5th starter slot, as the article linked shows.