FIP Calculator (Fielding Independent Pitching)

If you want to learn how to calculate the FIP baseball statistic, this FIP calculator will help you out. Whether you're a professional or an amateur player, your Fielding Independent Pitching is a valuable piece of information about your performance as a pitcher, and calculating it may be of huge assistance in setting up an appropriate training pace. The FIP formula may also come in handy for fans interested in estimating the odds of their favorite team climbing to the top of the league.

The FIP baseball statistic tells you what the earned run average of a player would look like over some time, were that pitcher to experience league average results in balls in play and league average timings. And in simpler terms - it measures the effectiveness of a pitcher based solely on events that the pitcher can control: home runs (HRs), walks (BBs), hits by pitch (HBPs) and strikeouts (Ks).

FIP allows for a solid indication of how well a pitcher performs as it takes out additional variables, such as the role of the opposing team's defense, or sheer luck.

Baseball statistics tend to use and refer back to many specific terms and abbreviations used only in baseball. Hence, it may be a good idea to clarify some of them before we move onto learning how to calculate FIP and explaining the FIP formula.

• Home Run (HR) - if after batting the ball, the batter can circle all of the bases and reach home without any errors on the defensive team's side, a home run is scored.

• Walk (BB) - also called base on balls (hence the abbreviation), it's an advance to first base that is awarded to a batter who takes four pitches that are balls.

• Hit by Pitch (HBP) - an event when a batter or any piece of his clothing or equipment other than the bat gets hit by a pitched ball. If the batter made an obvious attempt to avoid the pitch, they are awarded first base.

• Strikeout (K) - occurs when a batter racks up three strikes during their time at bat.

• Innings Pitched (IP) - the number of innings a pitcher has completed. A complete inning is measured by the number of batters and baserunners in play while the pitcher stands on the pitching mound.

Using the FIP calculator is quick and straightforward. To get your Fielding Independent Pitching calculated, follow these guidelines:

• Start by deciding whether you want to use a ready, estimated constant, or to calculate the constant based on league statistics.

  The constant is the FIP baseball statistic is a variable whose single purpose is to bring FIP onto an ERA scale. The constants tend to place around 3.1 - 3.2, and it's perfectly acceptable to use its approximate value while calculating FIP. You can refer to FanGraphs's list of constants over the years for a historical perspective (see cFIP column). If, however, you care about absolute precision, you can calculate this season's constant based on the most recent league statistics.

  • If you picked "no" in the "Calculate constant?" field, move onto FIP calculations.
  • If you chose "yes," provide the calculator with the following values: league ERA, league Home Runs, league Walks, league Hits by Pitch, league Strikeouts and league Innings Pitched.

• If you're content with an approximate FIP constant, fill out the fields in the FIP calculations section. We have provided a default constant of 3.214, which is the league constant for the year 2019, but you can adjust it to your liking - any value around 3.1 - 3.2 should be fine.

• Input the number of Home Runs, Walks, Hits by Pitch, Strikeouts, and Innings Pitched.

• The FIP calculator will return your Fielding Independent Pitching.

Even though our calculator can do the work for you, it doesn't hurt to learn how to do the math yourself.

To calculate Fielding Independent Pitching, use the following FIP formula:

FIP = ((13 * HR) + (3 * (BB + HBP)) - (2 * K)) / IP + FIP constant

Where:

• FIP - Fielding Independent Pitching
• HR - Home Runs
• BB - Walks
• HBP - Hits by Pitch
• K - Strikeouts
• IP - Innings Pitched

If you want to calculate the constant as well, use this equation:

FIP constant = league ERA - ((13 * league HR) + (3 * ( league BB + league HBP)) - (2 * league K)) / league IP

Where league ERA is the league Earned Run Average.

Now that we've established how to calculate FIP, let's go through an example to make sure there are no doubts left.

Let's say we're calculating the Fielding Independent Pitching of a pitcher with:

• 21 Home Runs
• 55 Walks
• 13 Hits by Pitch
• 235 Strikeouts
• 145 Innings Pitched

We're also settling for 2019's league FIP constant of 3.214.

In the case of that pitcher the calculations would look like this:

FIP = ((13 * 21) + (3 * (55 + 13)) - (2 * 235)) / 145 + 3.214 = 3.26

The Fielding Independent Pitching does a terrific job of isolating a given player's performance. As opposed to most other sabermetrics, such as WHIP or slugging percentage, it focuses solely on the events that the player can control, basically freeing the calculations from external variables such as an opposing team's lack of skill. This makes FIP one of the more accurate ways of measuring how well pitchers play, and can provide a player with extremely valuable data on what to improve and how to approach upcoming matches.

Admittedly, it is not perfect, and in some rare cases a player's performance can exceed what their FIP suggests. Nonetheless, it's one of the more precise sabermetrics out there, and serves as a great starting point for analyzing a player's skills.