Thanks to some great feedback on the first edition of The Reveille’s exploration into baseball advanced statistics, I decided to follow up with the sequel looking into LSU’s pitching with non-conventional baseball statistics. Hopefully, it performs more like Empire Strikes Back than Attack of the Clones. (What was George Lucas thinking? Midichlorians? Really?)
Everyone is relatively familiar with the two most common averaging statistics used for pitching: earned run average and walks-hits per inning pitched. ERA is just the number of earned runs a pitcher allows multiplied by their innings pitched, then multiplied by nine innings, while WHIP is the sum of hits and walks allowed divided by the pitcher’s inning pitched. Their relevance is absolutely here to stay. But an interesting advanced pitching metric is field-independent pitching, or FIP. FIP takes out all of those pesky, irritating chores that is defense from position players and only cares about one factor: The pitcher and what he controls by himself. That means strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches and home runs are the only events that can affect FIP. These actions are weighted differently in the FIP equation, which you can find below:
FIP = ((13(HR)) + (3(BB+HBP)) – (2(K))/(IP)) + FIP Constant
FIP Constant for SEC = 3.60
Here’s the cool part about this time around: Instead of using standardized values to compute the stat I wanted that may not be perfectly accurate to the league where analysis is occurring, the raw data required to calculate the FIP constant for the SEC was available for last season. This means these FIP numbers can be counted on to be remarkably accurate. FIP reads exactly like ERA, as a measure of runs per nine innings, making it easy for new fans to read, understand and compare FIPs of their favorite players. I also included basic measures for players’ strikeout-to-walk ratio and strikeouts, walks, and home runs per nine innings.
Let’s get to the numbers for returning LSU players who threw 20+ innings last season:

If I had to pick one player to spotlight, it’s Ma’Khail Hilliard. In his fourth season with LSU, he threw his most innings since he tallied a whopping 76 his freshman season in 2018, when LSU was coming off replacing all three of their weekend starters in Alex Lange (drafted), Jared Poche (drafted), and Eric Walker (Tommy John surgery). His sophomore year saw him regress with a permanent move to the bullpen but re-emerged last season as an important player to eat a lot of innings. Truthfully, outside of Landon Marceaux, he was LSU’s most consistent pitcher, and the numbers reflect that sentiment. Hilliard held a phenomenal 4.42 K/BB ratio, and with a low BB/9 statistic to add, he was able to effectively command the plate. It’s interesting that his FIP was lower than his ERA, considering his signature pitch is his curveball that loves the lower third of the zone, theoretically inducing many groundball outs. I think it’s a testament to Hilliard’s great fastball command and the pitch mixing with his big hook that he aided from the FIP analysis.
Devin Fontenot showed some good and some bad. His clean 10.53 K/9 in 34.2 IP tells you, if you didn’t already know, that Hilliard’s teammate from the same recruiting class likes to strike people out. He’s a flamethrower, hitting 96-97 with his fastball, but also has a nice slider to keep his opponents off balance. However, he struggled with some command last season, and it reared its head in the numbers and with a slight drop in draft stock. A 5.53 BB/9 needs improvement, and although his ERA was a fantastic 2.89, the FIP of 4.10 can indicate some of those control problems. If he can get those walks down while also making sure he’s not leaving too many pitches over the middle of the plate, Fontenot is the most talented pitcher on the roster— scouts will recognize his strides.
The fate of LSU’s season may be in the hands of these five remaining sophomores. When COVID-19 rocked the team in March of 2020, the team unfortunately saw what may have been multiple stunning seasons from their talented staff diffuse into the “What if?” realm. Cole Henry, Marceaux, AJ Labas and Jaden Hill have all been drafted, and veterans Eric Walker and Matthew Beck are no longer with the team. This year’s team has just four pitchers from that team two seasons ago: Hilliard, Fontenot, Trent Vietmeier and Jacob Hasty.
Thus, it was the job of this freshmen group last year to come and play right away. Like most freshmen, they each had ups and downs, but everyone has something to like going forward. For Floyd and Coleman, it was their strikeout rates. For Edwards, Hellmers and Money, it was their relatively low walk rates. FIPs were curious, favoring some and hurting others. Money’s stands out as the biggest difference, with a three-run difference in favor of his FIP to his ERA, showing how much of the short end of the stick he often got last year. At the end of the day, it is so crucial for these five, among other transfers and freshmen, to have good seasons because they are the only ones who have gone through a full SEC conference season.