I’m curious how this is going to work out. Shields has always had good peripherals, but his ERA has been higher than his FIP and xFIP for his entire career. Things like fly ball to home run rate and BABIP are subjected to a lot of randomness, but that randomness is sometimes overstated. They’re not TOTALLY random. It’s not a complete fluke that his ERA has been higher than his other numbers would suggest.

At the very least, I find it interesting that a major league team is not only willing to look past the surface numbers, but openly admits to doing so. So if you’re into that whole revenge of the nerds thing, i suppose you might want to root for the Rays and Big Game James tonight.

– Patrick Flood, Exile on 126th St.

Like Patrick said, it’s pretty great that Maddon is willing to explain that he’s pitching Shields this afternoon because of defense-independent pitching statistics when he could easily say, “oh, well of course we’re going with Shields here, he’s ‘Big Game James,'” and meet with a lot less resistance from the majority of fans and the media.

All that said, I struggle a little bit with xFIP, as I’ve mentioned here on a few occasions. I have no doubt it’s a useful tool and that most pitchers’ HR/FB rate eventually, with a large enough sample, should normalize somewhere near the league average.

But if I could wonder if perhaps Johan Santana was reliably yielding weak fly-ball contact this season when his xFIP was way above his ERA, I must allow that there’s a chance Shields consistently yields stronger-than-average fly-ball contact.

I’m probably fighting a strawman here because I don’t think anyone who really thought it through would pretend xFIP is the be-all end-all of pitching statistics, but do I see it sometimes bandied about like gospel, and I suspect there’s still a lot more work to be done in divorcing the pitcher on the mound from the defense behind him and the randomness inherent in the sport.

All that said, I’m still rooting for the Rays. Obviously.