Luck Adjusted Pitching
I’ve been working on creating some statistics for pitchers that take out some of the effects of “luck.” This allows pitchers to be more accurately valued and ranked according to underlying ability. The methodology is very simple, but it’s interesting how such simple estimates can tell you when a pitcher is for real (Tim Lincecum), if he’s just lucky as heck (Cliff Lee), or if he’s got the short end of the stick (Javier Vazquez).
Here is a very rough draft of the methodology
Here is an accompanying table in PDF format.
Here is an accompanying table in XLS format.
This is what Econ PhD candidates do in their spare time during the baseball offseason…