Early-Season ERAs

The Padres as a team have a 3.80 ERA this season.

The team’s FIP, however is 4.74. Good defense has helped that, certainly (.265 BABIP), but a horrific 15.3% HR/FB rate also inflates the homer total, and thus the defense-independent stat. The team’s xFIP, which normalizes HR/FB, is 4.04.

I thought I’d look at who has had the big ERA-xFIP splits early on.

In order of luck:

Luke Gregerson: 20.25 ERA, 5.74 xFIP
Mat Latos: 6.00 ERA, 3.65 xFIP
Cesar Ramos: 0.00 ERA, 0.00 xFIP (technically, his xFIP is -1.56)
Kevin Correia: 4.63 ERA, 3.60 xFIP
Sean Gallagher: 7.20 ERA, 6.60 xFIP
Jon Garland: 5.40 ERA, 4.95 xFIP
Adam Russell: 0.00 ERA, 0.62 xFIP
Clayton Richard: 3.86 ERA, 5.03 xFIP
Ed Mujica: 2.08 ERA, 3.74 xFIP
Tim Stauffer: 0.00 ERA, 2.09 xFIP
Mike Adams: 0.00 ERA, 3.41 xFIP
Heath Bell: 0.00 ERA, 3.94 xFIP
Chris Young: 0.00 ERA, 4.59 xFIP

What does this say?

Not much, this early in the year.

Correia and Garland, who are the only two pitchers with more than ten innings this year, have actually been a bit unlucky thus far.

It’s also good to see Latos’ ERA is worse than it looks, also Gallagher’s 6.60 xFIP is far from reassuring.

That’s the best I can do in terms of advanced stats thus far. More on this as the season develops and we can put more stock in them.