Liriano v Jimenez

Today at 1:10pm central time Francisco Liriano will face off against Ubaldo Jimenez in a matchup of two of the best young pitchers in baseball. Jimenez is having a Cy Young type season, 12-1 so far with a sparkling 1.16 ERA. Liriano isn't doing too shabby himself, going 6-3 with a 2.90 ERA. But this is the same type of comparison you will get before the game today by the studio announcers looking to "break down" the match-up, let's delve a little deeper and see what's really going on with these two pitchers. First we'll look at the two pitchers peripheral numbers to see how they compare.

Except for total innings pitched, Liriano has been significantly better this year, striking out almost two more batters per 9 innings, walking close to one less and allowing slightly fewer homeruns (although you could argue Liriano has been a bit lucky in regard to homeruns allowed). So what has allowed Jimenez to put up such ridiculous numbers so far this year?

Jimenez is playing way above his head in terms of BABIP and LOB%, his career BABIP is .282 and for LOB% it's 73.8, so we can expect some serious regression of those two numbers going forward. Liriano meanwhile sports a career .316 BABIP and 71.6 LOB%, so any regression he experiences will likely go in his favor.

So what about that 1.16 ERA that Jimenez has right now? That's pretty good right?

Not according to FIP. Don't get me wrong, a 2.93 FIP is nothing to laugh at, but it's quite a bit worse than Liriano's 2.11. It's even more apparent how badly ERA is overstating Jimenez's performance when you look at E-F, the delta between ERA and FIP. Even when you use the xFIP stat, which normalizes the Home Run's allowed component (which should account for Liriano's Home Run luck), Liriano is still having the better season, in fact Liriano is ranked second in FIP, first in xFIP and second in WAR among all pitchers.

Ubaldo Limenez is having a fantastic season by the traditional pitching metrics, wins and ERA. Francisco Liriano is having the better season, it just doesn't show up as well in the traditional stats.