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Steve, what is considered good and what is considered average? Without knowing that, I don't know what to think of Mo's 4.35 FIP. Also, can you provide us with all of the team's FIP numbers? I'm curious.

FIP is a fine stat ... in a world in which the only things that occur are HR, BB, HBP and SO and "league-specific factor."

But, in this world, other things that happen.

And, in 135% of the cases, "league-specific factor" is just wordplay for a variable added to everyone's results just to artifically make the total correspond to the league average in order to promote the creator of the stat's desire to make the league average of the stat reflect the actual league ERA.

Unfortunately, I think that the FIP number suffers from the small sample size bug at this point. Sure, Rivera looks better if you remove his home runs: four out of the ten earned runs he's allowed this year have come via the home run: the walk-off 3-R HR to Scutaro and the Broussard homer.

At this point I don't think you can look very hard at the FIP number and conclude that Rivera's been "unlucky." If Rivera had a FIP much lower than his ERA and had a Slugging Percentage Against that was very low, then I would say Rivera's being unlucky. As it stands, those two homers are cause for concern in and of themselves, and should not be discounted.

Also we don't need Rivera to be the seventh best pitcher in any rate category. We need him to be #1 in that kind of thing...

Umm..

Well, I don't know what any of those numbers mean. I've read it three times and I still don't get it.

As a regular baseball fan first, I am concerned about Mo. I am very concerned. This is not last years Mo. Now whether that is because of lack of work or age, who knows, but whatever it is, whatever is causing Mo to not be Mo, is what is worrying me at this moment.

Hopefully, he'll get straightened out because we're starting to click and we don't need Mo blowing anymore games.

Numbers can say whatever you want them to say but as I fan, I say that I am really concerned about Mariano Rivera.

~~~Steve, what is considered good and what is considered average? Without knowing that, I don't know what to think of Mo's 4.35 FIP. Also, can you provide us with all of the team's FIP numbers? I'm curious.~~~

Here are the league leaders in FIP:

http://tinyurl.com/ysk4bs

And, here's the Yankees team:

http://tinyurl.com/2tspv9

~~~If Rivera had a FIP much lower than his ERA and had a Slugging Percentage Against that was very low, then I would say Rivera's being unlucky. ~~~

But, his ERA-FIP is -4.09.
That's not much lower?

I know that his HR/FB rate is 20.0%
Is that what concerns you?

Having used my eyes to watch Mariano Rivera, I can tell you that his control and velocity have been off this season. Sadly, FIP doesn't seem to measure those key components to a pitcher's success.

If Marco Scutaro hits his drive against Mo ten feet more, to the left, would we even be having this debate?

Steve- what I meant was that I would need to see both things (FIP much lower than ERA, low SLG against). Sorry for the confusion, if I could have put the "and" in italics, I would have. Mo's SLG against is .500, which is godawful, and way higher than anything he's ever done before (career is .293). So if that number comes down, I suppose Mo will have better results.

Still, I agree with the people who are judging Mo's season on feel, rather than stats. Sure he's gotten his Mo-like broken bat weak ground balls, but I think he's given up some scary fly balls as well, even if it's only 20% of the balls in play. As Ben said, the meatballs Mo is throwing sometimes are what worries me.

If Scutaro's line drive was 10 feet more to the left ...

yes, we could be discussing this.

The same what if reasoning would need to be applied across the board. And once we started across the board expunging bad events, the league average ERA plummets to about 0.21 and if we do some futher expunging for Rivera, we still end up with an awful 0.94 ERA that's a rip his head off awfulness rate of being more than 4 times the league average.

This may sound weird, but I jusy think that Mo is in a slump. His velocity and movement are fine. The guy was nearly unhittable in spring training. And do you remember that classic performance on opening day?

I would like to see him on a more regular schedule. It seems like the Yanks have played a lot of blowout games one way or the other. He should get some work in more of those games so he can shake himself out of it.