Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Do you have a sense on why WAR is kind to Reuschel?
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One of pitcher WAR’s big components is the runs expected for a replacement pitcher - relying on that teams defense. WAR has his teams being worth negative defense, making a big gap between him pitching very well anyway and the projections based on the data that he had a horrible defense behind him prone to giving up many runs on balls in play. WAR also factors how runs were scored - rewarding FIP components. Reuschel was good at avoiding the long ball. He was good at keeping batted balls in play vs. out of the park, but even with a really bad defense and that tendency, he still did a good job at not giving up many runs (pretty similar ERA’s to Perry and Ryan), an impressive record.
The other component is that Palmer gets punished for these same things. Palmers ERA to FIP is an unusually huge gap, because FIP measures these same things. He has a 2.86 ERA, but a 3.50 FIP which typically demonstrates over a long sample lots of luck or a really, really good defense, which I don’t think anyone would dispute Palmer had behind him.
I’m sure there’s more smaller factors too, but this is the root cause.