ERA minus FIP is a quick and dirty stat available to sort at FanGraphs to help identify lucky and unlucky pitchers. No statistic is infallible. Yet, a positive ERA minus FIP indicates a pitcher was unlucky, and a negative suggests they were lucky, absent more data.
The subjects of deeper scrutiny in this piece are the qualified starting pitchers and a handful of eye-catching ones with at least 80 innings in 2023 and the highest positive ERA minus FIP marks.
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- 2024 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit
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2023 Positive ERA Minus FIP Leaders
Dylan Cease (SP - CWS) | 95.4 ADP
Dylan Cease was unlucky last year. However, his 3.72 FIP was his best ERA estimator and the only one under 4.00. His pitching data from last season has a handful of red flags. Thus, he was featured in "10 Pitchers to Avoid Drafting." He's slightly cheaper than he was when that piece was published. Nonetheless, he's not worth a top-100 pick.
Mitch Keller (SP - PIT) | 147.6 ADP
Mitch Keller is an adequate gamble at his ADP. The righty's 4.21 ERA was higher than his 4.16 xERA, 3.80 FIP, 3.70 xFIP and 3.83 SIERA last season. Keller also had a career-low 6.7 BB% and a 25.5 K%, his highest mark since debuting in 2019.
The most significant concerns about Keller building on last season's numbers are his .333 wOBA yielded to 430 left-handed batters and a nosedive for his fastball velocity to close the campaign. In Keller's first 26 starts last season, his fastball averaged 94.9 mph before plummeting to 93.5 mph in his final six starts. Keller's performance didn't suffer from the reduced heat, but it's worth monitoring in spring training.
Tyler Glasnow (SP - LAD) | 43.2 ADP & Tarik Skubal (SP - DET) | 52.0 ADP
Tyler Glasnow and Tarik Skubal are two peas in a pod. Both pitchers have sterling ERA estimators and elite strikeout ability. Unfortunately, they're each drafted slightly too early for their probable workloads.
Glasnow pitched 138.1 innings in 2023, and Skubal threw 95.0. Unless the Dodgers and Tigers throw caution to the wind and allow both of them to build on last season's workloads significantly, they'll have difficulty producing value commensurate with their ADPs as the SP12 and SP15. Shohei Ohtani (132.0 innings) and Kyle Bradish (168.2 innings) were the only top-15 starting pitchers who threw fewer than 170.0 innings in 2023. Ohtani's hitting also impacted his VBR.
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Josh Shepardson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Josh, check out his archive and follow him @BChad50.