Baseball stats for dummies part 2: WHIP

[Southwest Brewer]

WHIP - (walks + hits)/inning pitched

 

The thing I don't under stand is how this stat is really used. Looking at relief pitchers there are, for instance, a few guys right around 2.70 era, but the WHIP ranges from 0.95-1.35.

 

There are about 10 pitchers in the above range (for ERA and WHIP). What do those ERA/WHIP combos tell you about the two extremes? As long as they are all at 2.70 ERA, does the WHIP matter?

 

I always think of ERA as a very important stat. How does WHIP fit in the mix? Is WHIP less important for a strikeout pitcher? Is it more reflective of a pitcher's control?

 

Is WHIP better understood in conjunction with some other set of stats?

 

Thanks in advance.

[1992casey]

Pitching doesn't have a nice, handy, accurate, all-encompassing stat like hitting has in OPS. It's good to look over several stats and weigh them according, keeping their strengths and weaknesses in mind.

 

What I end up doing is taking pretty much opposite approaches to looking at hitting vs. pitching. With hitting, I start with OPS, then look at how other stats break it down: that's starting with the 'whole' and examining its parts. With pitching, I'll look at all the pieces and try to puzzle them together into a big picture.

 

With a pitcher, I think it's very important to look at anything to do with BBs, Ks, and HRs, getting ratios per innings pitched along with K/BB. There's an excellent chance that those would be the first stats I look at.

 

I'd say that both ERA and WHIP are good stats as long as we give them some breathing room for error. Both can be affected by luck (singles dropping in or not). ERA also fails to account for unearned runs the pitcher could have prevented (those six unearned runs that score after two are out).

 

There's got to be a threshold where we can flex around and and least consider that two ERAs and two WHIPs are relatively equal. I'm not sure what those thresholds should be, though. Maybe about .5 for ERA and .15 for WHIP?

 

There are some alternative stats floating around that are similar to ERA. Some people like straight run average (RA). That's all runs a pitcher has given up, both earned and unearned. DIPS and FIPS attempt to eliminate the effect of defense, calculating the ERA a pitcher 'should' have had based on BBs, Ks, and HRs. Those two stats are really worthy of their own thread.

[rluzinski]

I'm a huge fan of xFIPS (hardballtimes.com has it). It looks only at walks and strikes and estimates a pitcher's ERA from it. A lot of pitcher stats vary significantly (HRs and BABIP (batting average of balls in play)). Walks and Ks are pretty solid.

 

I like to use fangraphs.com to look at a pitcher's stats. it really helps to see how their stats change from year to year. HR rate jumps all over the place.

[1992casey]

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walks and strikes

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Do you mean "walks and strikeouts" or do you mean actually counting strikes?

[Southwest Brewer]

Quote:

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I'm a huge fan of xFIPS (hardballtimes.com has it). It looks only at walks and strikes and estimates a pitcher's ERA from it. A lot of pitcher stats vary significantly (HRs and BABIP (batting average of balls in play)). Walks and Ks are pretty solid.

 

I like to use fangraphs.com to look at a pitcher's stats. it really helps to see how their stats change from year to year. HR rate jumps all over the place.

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Does that mean you don't think WHIP is useful? Or are these xfips and babips related to whip?

 

The fangraph was interesting. I just took a few pitchers and looked at them against the mlb average....seemed like a good way to get a grasp on what guys do compared to the average pitcher.

[endaround]

Some stats are better descriptive stats and some are better projective stats. ERA and WHIP tell you alot about how exactly a given pitcher has fared. However, if you would like to project what that pitcehr is going to do in the future, the big three of K/9, BB/9, and HR/9 give you a lot better information, with K/9 being teh most informative.

[rluzinski]

Do you mean "walks and strikeouts" or do you mean actually counting strikes?

 

Strikeouts http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Had too much cheap beer last night.

 

I'm not a huge fan of WHIP, no. Like end says, it depends if you want a record of how a pitcher did or want to predict what he WILL do.

[brewers19]

Got a question.

 

In most all of the BP books that I have read to date, they keep reiterating how BABIP shows no consistency across seasons for a pitcher; yet they include it in each player's stats both on their website and in BP 2006.

Is there any reason for this outside of maybe just showing how lucky each pitcher was?

[1992casey]

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In most all of the BP books that I have read to date, they keep reiterating how BABIP shows no consistency across seasons for a pitcher; yet they include it in each player's stats both on their website and in BP 2006.

Is there any reason for this outside of maybe just showing how lucky each pitcher was?

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I'd say in most cases, we find out whether or not a pitcher has been lucky, although there seem to be some exceptions. Russ has provided strong evidence that Matt Wise might be one of them.

 

Defense should stay consistent from pitcher to pitcher. Assuming the same defenders are playing, the huge majority of pitchers (like close to all of them) will tend to gravitate back toward the overall team BABIP.

 

Glendon Rusch's 2003 would have made him a probable 'bad luck' poster child. At one point, the team was fielding about 60% of the balls put in play while he was on the mound while fielding about 69% of the BIP vs. the staff as a whole.

 

None of this, of course, is meant to suggest that variances in OBP (walks) and SLG (hitting the ball hard) would be meaniingless.

 

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Note: BABIP = Batting Average on Balls In Play

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[Southwest Brewer]

I'm lost. Does WHIP have something to do with BABIP or is this a totally seperate thing?

[brettac1]

BABIP kind of gives you an idea how lucky/unlucky a pitcher has been in regards to hits. Since hits are half of WHIP, it has an influence on them.

 

I think a stat like WHIP (or any that uses hits allowed) is kind of shaky. Like end said earlier, the best way to gauge a pitcher is K/9, BB/9, and HR/9. Any other ball in play, most pitchers have very little influence over. Some guys (like Wise, knuckleballers, trick pitch guys) have more influence.

[rluzinski]

Pitchers DO control BABIP to an extent. It's just that team defense and dumb luck do a lot more. As a result, it's usually just more reliable to use team or league BABIP.