Aaron Nola is the No. 1 pitcher on Fangraphs
 

His ERA is 3.25, Verlander is 1.75. Someone will have to explain this to me. Gonsolin (16-1, 2.14) isn't even listed? Is this site just a joke? Kevin Gaussman ahead of Ohtani, Tyler Anderson and Framber?

Betting it’s due to their FIP’s being almost the same and Nola’s K/BB rates.

I like the new stats when they are tied to things that actually happened and league averages. Not so much this kind of FIP hypothetical where the value is placed on only a subset of outcomes. I do not understand how, logically, K’s are simultaneously incredibly important for pitchers, but completely unimportant for batters.

I guess but who the hell in their right mind is going to take Nola over Verlander this year?

I never said the mathematicians were in their right mind :D. I agree with you, Verlander is obviously the #1, an incredible season at age 39 after missing almost all of the last 2 years. I see no reasonable argument that Nola had a better year, but I’m pretty sure it’s primarily those 2 figures the advanced stats love being almost even that can lead to Nola winning their equation.

Perhaps Nola 's pitches burn more calories on their way to the plate, or the balls hit off him have an average angle 0.174 degrees lower than Verlander, or his spin to velocity raiio on his curveball is better in games played on Tuesdays. Data is only useful IMO if the result somewhat comports with common sense and observation. I suspect their analysis of batters may be similarly flawed but have not reviewed yet.

I was all in on the advanced stats, until they started to divorce from actual reality. I wouldn't say the data has to comport with observation; one of the big benefits of it is that it can highlight things that have been undervalued, it can be genuine inquiry and not just to use as alignment to current narratives. When they were tied to actual performance or comparison to the league, I think they were much more valuable than the traditional stats that tend to just reward players on the best teams. Win Shares root concept, using teams actual results > WAR's root concept using a completely fictional baseline. Somewhere though, we went from realizing Craig Biggio is a great player to asserting that a dude with half the ERA of others is better and yanking starters for journeyman relievers at X pitch count regardless of how well the starter is doing.

That, and it would be useful if they described their methodology for how they came to the rankings they did. Simply making a ranked list with no rationale or idea as to how they came to those rankings doesn't exactly instill a sense of confidence.

I think Gonsolin isn't listed on FanGraphs because the default Min IP for their chart is Qualified which would be 162 innings. If you drop it down to 130 innings, Gonsolin shows up with a WAR of only 2.7. So does Spencer Strider at 4.9.

For comparison, here are the top 10 from BaseballReference which has Nola second behind Alcantara by a wide margin along with the top 21 from FanGraphs. I don't know the difference between how the 2 sites calculate WAR but clearly it can result in some significantly different values.

The people on that site aren't mathematicians or statisticians.

If you want a better example look at 1965 NL Pitchers. Fangaphs thinks Bob Veale was better than Juan Marichal and B-Ref thinks Jim Maloney was better than Sandy Koufax. B-Ref thinks Veale is only worth half of what Fangaphs does. Is either one right? Probably not, the emperor has no clothes.

So Verlander isn't in the top TEN for Baseball Reference? That's insane.

My bad. I posted the top 10 WAR for pitchers just for the NL. Here's the top 10 WAR for AL pitchers from Baseball Reference. I can't find a list there that is overall for both leagues.

I posted the AL list with my previous post as well.

whew