Who's Guarding Your Standards - & - Why DIPS beats ERA

Table of Contents

• Who's Guarding Your Standards

• Why DIPS beats ERA

Total Reading Time: 5 minutes

Let’s dive into how important your role is in your team standards and look at why DIPS is a better pitching stat than ERA.

Let’s go!

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Who's Guarding Your Standards

Typically we don’t talk much about standards when it comes to pitching coach topics and yet I’ll argue it’s one of the most important skills we do.

First off, let’s review. Standards are the expectations of the program, the “way we do things here”. Really good programs have really clear and really high standards. These standards are more important for the program than any one player within it.

While low-performing or weaker programs have sand-shifting standards. Star players get one set of acceptable behaviors while others get something entirely different.

Having solid, unwavering Standards creates:

• Clarity for everyone within the program

• Consistency no matter the player or skill level

• A Road-Map for behavior for everyone

• Clear Leadership and Expectations

• Something to rise up to and achieve

How does this impact us as pitching coaches? While the Head Coach sets the program standards overall, as a PC you’re the messanger that carries them out and helps enforce those standards within the pitching and catching staff.

Think about all the little things that can either go wrong, or seem like constant micro-management on your part, and you’re likely dealing with standards. Teams that are very clear about the standards know what behaviors they should have, so it’s those standards that keep all those “little things” little.

This list isn’t ground-breaking, yet I’m amazed at how fluid these things can be based on either the skill level of the player involved or the effort level of the pitching coach. Notice that YOU have standards too. You can’t expect your pitchers to bust-ass in practice everyday if you’re always leaning against the wall drinking a latte.

Always remember - You’re a walking standards billboard.

Teams with solid standards consistently win over time. This takes a constant diligence to ensure the standards are upheld, by everyone. This isn’t easy, but then again, neither is winning consistently, over time.

Everybody wants to do what’s easy with the least amount of effort. Standards help ensure this isn’t the case. One of your main jobs as the pitching coach is to uphold your team standards within the most visible part of your team - your pitchers and catchers.

Why DIPS beats ERA

First a little background…

• ERA is a pitcher’s Earned Run Average. It’s the average number of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per 7 innings. While this is an age-old measure used to rate pitchers, the biggest weakness is it doesn’t take into account the poor quality of your defense.

While I don’t want to overwhelm the already packed data/analytics space, I read something recently that I want to run by you.

Instead of using ERA and all of it’s flaws, try shifting instead to something called DIPS.

• DIPS is Defense Independent Pitching Statistics. How this varies from ERA is it seperates results into 2 categories: defense-independent stats like walks, strikeouts and HRs are determined almost totally by the pitcher’s ability level. And defense-dependent stats like the rate of hits allowed on balls put in play are almost totally the result of luck and the skills of your defense.

When you want more clarity with your pitchers you need more specificity with your information

If you’re into stats and are curious about this whole ERA vs DIPS conversation, then check out the X thread by Chris Langin (@LanginTots13): https://x.com/langintots13/status/1911162614421274964?s=12&t=tDQwSVBdTNL_-pEBfNxBpA

I hope you enjoyed today’s Curveball Chronicles Issue.

Be sure to check out PitchingCoachCentral.com for all past issues as well as news on this year’s Pitching Summit!

See You Next Week!