Relief Pitching FIP and Team Wins

San Diego, Atlanta and Cleveland have the best relief pitching in baseball. 

Here are the top ten teams Relief Pitching xFIP thus far:

1. San Diego  3.65
2. Atlanta   3.66
3. Cleveland   3.68
4. San Francisco   3.75
5. Philadelphia   3.78
6. NY Mets   3.90
7. Minnesota   3.92
8. Seattle   3.94
9. Miami   3.98
10. Baltimore   4.00

Remember that FIP is a stat that estimates a pitcher's run prevention independent of defense. It's based on only Strikeout, walks, hit by pitches and home runs allowed. xFIP finds a pitcher's FIP, but it uses projected home-run rate instead of actual home runs allowed. The home run rate is determined by that season's league average HR/FB rate.  FIP uses the ERA scale. More can be found about the FIP and xFIP calculations on Fangraphs HERE

Since we don't have xFIP prior to 2002, I used overall relief pitching FIP and compared team win total for each team since 1997.

FIP is on the y-axis. Each season in the x-axis. The higher the FIP on the y-axis (using the ERA scale) the worse the relief pitching.

Red dots below are the teams with 95 wins in each season since 1997. Notice that only 26 teams of the 119 teams who had 95 wins since 1997 had relief pitching FIPs higher than 4.00.  That's only. 21.8%.  

Of course many things can happen in the playoffs.  For fun, how many of these 95+ win teams since 1997 won the World Series? 

Here are the other World Series winners who didn't win 95 games.

The top 5 worst Relief Pitching FIP World Series winners:

2023  Texas Rangers

2010  San Francisco Giants

2006  St. Louis Cardinals

2000 New York Yankees

1997 Florida Marlins

Each of these teams made up for their relief pitching deficiencies with either top 10 starting pitching or top ten ability to create and score runs.

Is Late August/Early September Heat More Frequent Nowadays?

Today the temperatures reached the lower and mid 90s across not only Ohio but much of the lower Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. The question of whether or not late season heat is becoming more frequent in northern Ohio always surfaces during heat like this.  

High temperatures August 27th:

Heat Index reading on August 27th:

So how do we answer this question?  First what time period are we looking at when we say "late August/early September"?  I like to use the last week of August and first week of September. A fourteen day period that is a decent duration sample size.

August 25 to September 7

What about temperature?  First, let's take look how many instances each year the high temperatures reach 90 degrees or higher during this 14 day period? (Given the forecast we could conceivable hit 90° four times by the end of the week).

Contrary to some of our recollections, its been 6 years since we had a late August stretch of 90+ similar to this year.  This actually occurred the most frequently in the 1950s. The early 2000s are a close second with high occurrences in 2010, 2012, 2016 and 2018.  With the exception of a few years like 1973, 1983, 1991 and 1993 it rarely happened in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 1990s.  

What was interesting about the late August/early September of 1953 period was that we were above 90 degrees eleven of the fourteen days. 

The top number is the high temperature. The bottom number is the highest heat index that day.  Notice the extreme humidity didn't accompany the heat initially. In fact, dew points were very dry the first 6 days of that stretch from August 25 through the 30th. It wasn't until later in the period -- day 7 of the 11 day stretch -- that the heat index rose above 100° for 4 straight days.

Now compare 1953 and its 10 days above 90° to the 7 day stretch in 2018.

What about the overall average high temperatures during this 14 day period.  Are there any changes locally?  Here is a look each year since 1980. 2016 and 2018 were well above normal in high temperatures as was 2010 and 2012.  

Were these warm, late season stretches just relegated to northern Ohio?

Notice that most of these late season hot periods were centered over the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and portions of New England and eastern Canada while the western US experiences well below normal temperatures.  Below are the temperatures above normal (warm colors) and below normal (cool colors) across the US and Canada.

The bottom line is that long hot stretches don't happen every year in late August/early September like many remember.