Pitcher stats: How affected by the quality of his team?

My son found a quote:
"Stats are like a girl in a bikini they show alot but not everything"

Thats a hard one. I ask some what the same question when there is not much defense behind the pitcher???
Son pitched last night 6 innings 10Ks 6 walks in the first 2 innings (umps 1st time behind the plate)none after that. Gave up 1 hit and his ERA was .000.
Lost 7-4. Bizzare!

Micdsguy has a good question how are these situations looked at???

I am not making excuses for the walks, I would say 3 of the 6 were ligit. Strike zone was from eyeballs to shoelaces with no corners. Its a job I would never do. The first time back there is gotta be rough. As for selling stikes probably would depend a lot on the ump.
Not trying to high jack I just can relate.

One might think walks are a pretty straight forward stat, (assuming a perfect ump) but **I believe** that intentional walks are charged against the pitcher even when he's a reliever just entering a game.

Intentional walks can be prompted by the errors of his teammates and the tactics of his coach: Good example of a pitcher's stats being tarnished by events utterly beyond his control.

I am a big stat guy, but will be the first to admit they don't mean anything in the short run and particularly on "bad" teams.

For youth pitchers on poor fielding teams I belive you must focus on what you are trying to achieve within yourself as a pitcher. So I would chart him and look at each outing as far as hitting locations and changing speeds they way he was trying to. Strike/Ball ratio's are VERY important, WHIP is a good indicator. However even WHIP is subjective and it gets very difficult to accurately measure, ERA, API, BA/Pit as they all get out of wack and end up being subjective. The other area you need to be careful of is pitches within an inning. Everyone talks about total pitch count, but total pitches withen an inning can degrade a pitcher, as well as pitching from the stretch the whole game. Another area to be careful of is the pitcher trying to compensate for a poor catcher and rushing his delivery.

I can give you a first hand experience; last season, my sons team batted (as a team) less that 200 and average 10 Ks per game. The number of errors average more than 5 a game, sometimes way more. Early in the season, my son had an ERA of low 1s but lead the team in runs allowed (ground ball pitcher). (All of the pitchers had ERAs less than 3 but very few wins)

The whole staff pitched well and kept the team in most games and they lost many games 3-2, 2-1 etc. As the season progresses the pressure to pitch a perfect game, to give the team a chance, began to weight on the pitchers and they began to crumble. ERAs shot up as well as the loss margins.

Unfortunately, they're not much better this season.

I think the quality of P coach also can affect stats.
Some coaches call poor games as far as pitch selection and also allow their pitchers mechanics to develop glitches.
A poor fielding and hitting team can cause a pitcher to throw a lot more pitches than needed. Also can have a mebtal affect on the pitchers as routine p-lays are not made.

Boyd Nation, who has his own web-site geared to college ball, has done some statistical work on this and gone so far as to compare a pitcher's published ERA with his ERA excluding the defense behind him (I think he calls it DERA). Basically, the pitcher's DERA is calculated based on the three things he is perceived to have control over ... walks, strike outs, and home runs. Granted, an umpire may have some effect on walks and strike outs, but for the most part, I think they even themselves out over the course of a season.

Anyway, it is an intersting perspective, and in the past, Nation has actually broken down the numbers over the course of a season, identifying the 'top' pitchers in the country and comparing their ERA and their DERA, and also separating those whose DERA is higher than their ERA and vice versa. It is very very interesting.

Here is a link to Boyd Nation's website ...
Boyd's World

FBM: Thanks for bringing this up I forgot about it. Actually Voros McCraken came up with term "dERA" defense independent ERA. If you can't sleep some night go google "defense independent baseball statistics" and you will be asleep in no time....

Some basics are at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Independent_Pitching_Statistics

But holy baseball batman - HS baseball is so far from this that maybe we can come up with a better one. Defense Assisted ERA....DAERA...the higher the number the better, actually in my sons case it is CAERA, Catcher Assisted.....

Even walks are subject to poor defense. Those misplays that put on a runner instead of ending an inning help run up pitch counts eventually lead to walks, etc. either in that inning or later in the game. Note that I say misplays as sometimes it isn't the errors as much as the inability to reach the ball or get the ball to first quickly enough or throw to the right base, or cover first that plague a weak defensive team as much or more than errors. Also a weak throwing catcher can lead to a lot more runs and fewer double plays, especially when combined with a pitcher who doesn't get the ball to the plate quickly from the stretch. Another thing that can have a big effect on ERA's is who comes in after a pitcher who has left runners on base.

Another thing that I've seen affects pitchers in HS where the quality of the teams varies considerably is the quality of the teams they face and for relievers the quality of the hitters they face. One of our relievers in six 1 inning outings faced the middle of the order of the team that won the national classic, the top of the order of the team that won the Bishop Gorman tournament on the strength of their hitting and then in our spring break tournament didn't pitch until the end of the championship game, of course facing only the strongest hitting team in the tournament. Two of his other outings were against a weaker team where he faced the middle of the order once again and against a good team. His one outing against a weaker team and one against something other than the middle of the order of a good team resulted in pretty easy innings.