FIP in Baseball Explained: Why Fielding Independent Pitching Tells the Real Story

Part 3 of 8 | What FIP Means, How It’s Calculated, and Why It’s Better Than ERA for Evaluating Pitchers

Pitchers get blamed for a lot, runs, blown leads, career-shortening meltdowns, but what if I told you the number we most often use to judge them, ERA, is only telling part of the truth?

Enter: FIP.
Fielding Independent Pitching.

It sounds like a mouthful (and maybe a little judgy), but FIP is one of the most important pitching stats of the modern era. Why? Because it strips away all the defensive noise and focuses on what a pitcher can actually control.

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What is FIP?

**FIP measures what a pitcher is responsible for, **strikeouts, walks, hit batters, and home runs, and ignores everything else. Like that bloop single that falls in because your center fielder got a bad jump? That’s not on the pitcher.

FIP asks a better question than ERA:

“How well is this pitcher doing independent of the defense behind him?”

Because let’s face it, plenty of pitchers have seen their ERA go up thanks to bad luck or bad gloves.

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How Do You Calculate FIP?

Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it without needing a spreadsheet.

The basic formula looks like this:

FIP = (13 × HR + 3 × (BB + HBP) – 2 × K) ÷ FIP Constant

(FIP Constant: A league-specific value that adjusts FIP to match the league's ERA)

Translation:

• Home runs hurt the most (13x multiplier)

• Walks and hit batters hurt too (3x)

• Strikeouts help (2x)

• Divide it all by innings pitched

• Then add a constant so the scale looks like ERA (around 4.00 is average)

If that looks a little chaotic, don’t stress. All you need to know is:

• FIP rewards strikeouts

• Punishes walks and homers

• Ignores fielding errors, unlucky bloopers, and bad positioning

In other words: it isolates skill from circumstance.

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A Little Background

FIP came into the public baseball consciousness in the early 2000s, thanks to Voros McCracken (yes, that’s his real name), who famously argued that pitchers don’t control what happens after the ball is put in play.

That one claim changed the way front offices and analysts viewed pitching, especially with the rise of analytics in front offices like Oakland (Moneyball) and Tampa Bay.

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What’s a “Good” FIP?

Here’s a simple scale for reference:

FIP Performance

Under 3.00=Elite

3.00–3.50= Very Good

3.50–4.00= Solid

4.00–4.50=Meh

Over 5.00 = Hide the bullpen

And yes, FIP can sometimes look way better (or worse) than ERA, especially for pitchers stuck behind a bad defense or blessed with a great one.

Top FIP Seasons (Since 1900, Min. 100 IP)

1999 Pedro Martínez= 1.39

2022 Jacob deGrom= 1.54

2014 Clayton Kershaw = 1.81

2003 Pedro Martínez= 2.13

2023 Spencer Strider = 2.85

(Note: Older FIP calculations use modern formulas retroactively.)

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Why FIP Matters

FIP doesn’t replace ERA but it tells you when ERA might be lying. If a pitcher has a 4.60 ERA but a 3.10 FIP? They’re probably better than their stat line suggests. If it’s the other way around… yeah, they’re skating on thin ice.

FIP is the truth serum for pitchers. It filters out the mess and zeroes in on execution.

So next time someone bashes a starter for “giving up too many runs,” ask them for his FIP. If they don’t know it? Just smile and say, “I’ll wait.”

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Coming up in Part 4: wRC+; the hitting stat that adjusts for league, park, and actually tells you who’s really raking.

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