Everyone knows the old investor adage of “buy the dip”, whereby you target and buy undervalued stocks that are priced low as opposed to chasing hot stocks that are already at or near all-time highs. Well, this is a different type of stocks column, one which focuses on fantasy assets and where I convince you to buy not the dip but the FIP. Better yet, buy the xFIP!
There’s a really simple process to using xFIP to identify buy low and sell high pitchers.
First, a quick explainer of FIP and xFIP for those who might need one:
FIP stands for fielding independent pitching, a stat that isolates for things a pitcher can largely control, like strikeouts, walks, and HR. While ERA fully credits pitchers with every run allowed in a game, FIP gets rid of a lot of the randomness that comes from batted balls in play, like poor defense and high BABIP, which can contribute to runs scoring. FIP alone has for a long time been an excellent measure of a pitcher’s effectiveness.
xFIP, or expected fielding independent pitching, is FIP but with a formula that normalizes for inflated or deflated HR rates. Sometimes pitchers give up home runs at highly inflated and deflated rates. xFIP accounts for that and gives you a number that is more closely in line with what a pitcher’s FIP should be.
When reading FIP and xFIP, it is fine to scale it like you would ERA, so sub 3.00 is excellent, around 4.00 is average, and the higher you get above 4.00 the worse a pitcher is.
So, here is an easy way to use xFIP to determine buy low- or sell high-pitching candidates: Simply line up xFIP and ERA and look for large disparities.
Using that method, here are some under-performing, buy low candidates as of August 22nd:
Of those listed, I think Gray, Pivetta, Kikuchi, and Bello provide the juiciest potential value down the stretch, though I would be open to rostering all of them with the exception of probably Feltner depending on league size and settings.
Perhaps more interestingly, here are some over-performing, sell high candidates. The greater the disparity, the louder the alarm bells should ring in your ears if you are rostering any of the following:
Of that bunch, Woo, Lopez, Greene, and Gil are great sell high candidates. All four have a lot of ability, but storm clouds are certainly on the horizon if things don’t change for them. Myers, Abbott, Ortiz, and Suarez seem like smoke and mirrors to me, lacking big swing and miss stuff and getting by largely on mediocre stuff, unsustainably low BABIPs, and/or fortuitous HR ratios.
If you read my previous columns about targeting buy low hitters, you’ll remember I’ve consistently tried to make the point that while these methods are largely effective in the aggregate, to get a stronger sense of a player’s actual ability or expected output you really have to dig deeper into the stat pile. But, if you want a simple method, simply buy the xFIP!
