I was wondering if anyone might know the answer to a question of mine, be it through empirical evidence, from observation, or just common sense.

When it comes to ERC and ERC#, I have been operating under the assumption that if a pitcher's ERC# is lower than their ERC, that means the pitcher is performing better than their overall numbers suggest (obviously ERA would be the primary metric ERC relates too, but I am asking this question in the way in which many people look at a Pitchers ERA combined with their number of IP in order to get a quick glimpse of how that pitcher performed)

Then with regards to the inverse my thought has always been that if a pitchers ERC# is higher than their ERC, that would mean that pitcher has likely had good luck when it comes to BABIP, help from a friendly ballpark, their fielders bailing them out?

All that being said, I now realize I have 2-3 questions.

1. Am I interpreting ERC vs ERC# in the correct manner or have I got it mixed up?

2. Does the SIM take ERC vs ERC# difference into account each time when your pitcher is playing? Or over the course of a season? If the pitchers ERC# works out be better than regular ERC, does that mean they have a greater chance of posting a season's worth of numbers better than what they posted in real life in that given year of player you choose?

3. Is comparing ERC and ERC a waste of time? Should you just look at ERC# and use that number basically as the pitcher's ERA for the season in question? Is the Sim itself using ERC# as the driver behind a pitcher's ERA?

No. (But I'm no expert)

I think you're misinterpreting what ERC is. It's a Bill James stat that attempts to estimate ERA based on the below components:

edit: Copy/pasting from Wikipedia looks like crap, here is the Wiki page: Component ERA - Wikipedia

The formula for ERC as it appears in the 2004 edition of the Bill James Handbook:

ERC=9*(H+BB+HBP)*PTBBFP*IP-0.56

where H is hits, BB is bases on balls (walks), HBP is hit by pitch, BFP is batters faced by pitcher, IP is innings pitched, and PTB is pitcher's total bases and is defined as:

PTB=0.89*(1.255*(H-HR)+4*HR)+0.56*(BB+HBP-IBB)

where HR is home runs, IBB is intentional walks, and others are as above.

The normalized version of ERC you see in Sim searches is just adjusting the ERC across baseball history to account for the run-scoring environment in that season and league. So if the ERC# is much lower than the ERC, that just means that the pitcher was operating in a hitter-friendly era, and a pitcher-friendly era if the ERC# is much higher than ERC.

The sim does not directly use ERC as part of its algorithm, but I still find it a very useful one size fits all metric to look at when evaluating potential pitchers to put on my team, as all the components of ERC (OAV, BB/9, HR/9, etc.) are directly used by the Sim.

It is a better stat to use for predicting future performance than ERA (why Bill James created it), and definitely so in the Sim which barely considers ERA but heavily considers all the components of ERC as discussed above.

tldr:

ERC = actual calculation
ERC# = adjusted for season