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Valuing Starters and Relievers (December 27, 2003)

Posted 1:16 a.m., January 2, 2004 (#50) - Rob Rolek(e-mail)
Free Outs, so don't use ERA:

Ken Arneson mentioned this above but I thought I'd expand on it. Any reliever who enters the game in the middle of an inning is at a big advantage. If there are any outs he gets Free Outs. It's a lot easier to give up 0 ER if you only need 1 or 2 outs instead of 3. Even if there's nobody out, if there are men on base, those baserunners can't hurt you but can help you w/forceouts, DP's, baserunning outs, while if they score they don't touch your ERA. So, we shouldn't use plain old ERA when evaluating relievers. I don't think the effect of Free Outs is negligible, but I have no data to back it up. I wonder:

1. How much of the ERA difference do Free Outs accounts for?
2. Someone said they assume reliever Component ERA is better than starter Component ERA. Is it? Does anyone have the data?

Thanks for the great discussion!

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