Drew,
I think John covered your question pretty well.  As I qualified in the article, some pitchers do indeed vary from this general rule, but not very many and not by very much.  Also, because HR/FB is so unstable, we really need to see several years of a pitcher beating the rule for us to say he has some sort of knack for it.  As to Ubaldo, he’s only really bested a league average HR/FB for one and a quarter years now, so I don’t think we can call him an exception yet.  Check out Brett Myers, though.  There’s very little doubt that he is an exception to this rule (for the worse).

Kampfer,
FIP probably should be closer to ERA in this table because there’s some selection bias at play.  On a full list of pitchers, this wouldn’t be the case.  In this table, pitchers with abnormally high or low HR rates are chosen, and while LIPS essentially ignores HRs, FIP does not.  So while both FIP and ERA are counting HRs, LIPS is not, which is exactly what you picked up on.

As to year-to-year consitency, David answered you pretty well.  If you’re seeing year-to-year consistency, it’s coming from an exception like Brett Myers or from players who are hovering around league average, which is what we’d expect.

excellent article and comments by everyone. 
I would love a detailed explanation of LIPS vs xFip if possible.

Colin,

What Derek meant (I believe) was that sometimes a pitcher’s performance is not in-line with his track record. What we want in that case is a statistic that can tell us whether or not his performance thus far has been “real,” in so far as his peripherals backing it up. LIPS is a more useful tool here than FIP. Yes, an updated projection is best but (1) There aren’t any top-notch regularly updated projections out there as far as I’m concerned, and (2) An updated projection can’t give you the same kind of scope that LIPS might. It tells you the pitcher’s most likely talent level at the moment, but it won’t tell you that he’s been blowing that away this season.

The numbers here indeed make Tim Lincecum seem overvalue by a LOT—but is he?

I agree that Tim’s 2.22 FIP is too low—although his ERA after his first two of what may have been weakened starts is a surprisingly close 2.15.

What I don’t agree is that his LIP is closer to how he has really pitched than his FIP.

First of all, Tim’s ERA of 2.66 is actually closer to the 2.22 FIP than the 3.24 LIP.  Second, that 2.66 ERA includes a BABIP against of .338.  Tim’s bases per hit are among the lowest of all pitchers and watching him pitch, he has given up a TON of hits that weren’t well struck.

Tim’s 23.3% line drive rate is high and would actually support a BABIP of slightly HIGHER than .338, but many of those line drives have been nearly as much fliner/flies and fliner/liners.

In Tim’s rookie season, he allowed 1.61 bases per hit. Last season he reduced that to 1.43 bases.  This season he is down to 1.35.

Meanwhile his BABIP against has risen from .295 to .313 to .338.  As I look at how those numbers fit together, it appears to me there has been less and less solid contact against Tim and more and more floinks that have become base hits.

This season Tim has allowed 16 doubles, but only 1 triple and 3 homers in 13 games.  Close to half of those doubles haven’t been hit very hard, nor have an even higher percentage of his singles against.

I think Tim’s FIP is closer to how he has actually pitched and that despite a possible mini-slump before month’s end, his ERA at season’s end will be closer to 2.22 than to 3.24.

By the way, lest you think that as a Giants fan I favor their pitchers, Matt Cain has pitched closer to his 4.04 FIP than his 2.39 ERA.  Matt’s 88.2% strand rate will almost certainly be close to a dozen points lower by season’s end, and his ERA will jump accordingly.

Matt’s hits and walks against are close to his career averages and his homers are at an all-time high rate for him.  Although he has pitched well in his last five starts and may be on his way to actually PITCHING better the rest of the season, his OPS against is just higher than in 2007, when due to a lack of run and bullpen
support, he went only 7-16 with a 3.65 ERA.

Some have posited that Matt’s home run rate is up because he has had more leads in the past and may have been just throwing strikes in blowout games.  In reality, each of his nine homers against have been in close games in which the game was within two runs either before or after the home run.  All but one were within one run.

Matt’s 2.39 ERA has been refracted with mirrors.  I see no reason why Matt shouldn’t start the All-Star game in his first appearance there, but by season’s end, many will wonder how he got that start.  For Matt, unless he truly starts pitching considerably better, the funhouse is ending.

Also, for fantasy, we don’t really care about a lot of the neutralization, right?  We WANT to know what ERA a pitcher’s skills combined with park and defense will produce.  You want to use something like DIPS, but using actual team BABIP rates and ballpark rates for HR/FB, BABIP, etc.

Cyril,

It was answered. The year-to-year correlation of HR/OF is very, very low, so much so that it’s better to ignore home runs completely unless you have many years of data.

Taking pitchers with 350+ BFP, I found a y-t-y “r” of 0.84 for GB/Batted Ball and a 0.17 “r” for HR/OF in the 2007 Annual.

Will a pitcher not go far from 11% HR/FB since pitchers cannot control how many HR fly out of the park? If so, what is the normal variance?

Thanks! I will be sticking to xFIP since I don’t have access to LIPS. However, I’ll make sure to keep an eye on the stats that xFIP doesn’t take into account, which I normally do anyway!