Pitching Stats

General Pitching Topics
#1

Well I’ve wondered this for a while and just wanted to know your guys’ opinions on this subject. Theres a lot of different stats a pitcher can have like strikeouts and wins but I don’t think this has any meaning at all. To me it seems that the only stat that matters is ERA. How many runs you let in. Plain and simple. Yeah I understand you can have a bad inning that can mess that stat up but MLB wise it seems that all that should matter is ERA. If I could pick any starting pitcher for my dream team I’d find the starter with the lowest ERA. He would give me the greatest chance of winning the game.
End of story right? I don’t care if he walks 3 batters an inning, if he can get them out thats fine. Now another thing that comes into play is the fact that you can have a low ERA and what I said throw a lot of balls and walk a lot of batters, as long as you can get out of the inning. But my guess is that if you don’t last long eventually you will get hammered before you come out of the game raising your ERA. I bet if I look for lowest MLB ERA the pitcher would be one who can last a pretty long time in a game.

What’s your guys’ opinions? I’m wrong a lot so shoot away at me, agree or disagree?

#2

First pitch strikes goes along way.

#3

If you are going to analyze a pitcher’s individual ERA, you have to compare it to the rest of the league or at least to your teammates. ERA is less important for relievers, as one bad outing can really kill your ERA.

For starting pitchers, I would look at ball/strike ratio, strikeout/walk ratio, groundball/strikeout/flyout ratio.

If you are specifically referring to MLB pitchers, I would strongly look at the strikeout/9 innings ratio, K:BB ratio, and ERA.

#4

[quote=“Bower”]To me it seems that the only stat that matters is ERA. How many runs you let in. Plain and simple. End of story right? I don’t care if he walks 3 batters an inning, if he can get them out thats fine.
What’s your guys’ opinions?[/quote]

ERA is fine when compared to the rest of the league as someone else said. But ERA doesn’t really tell you how many runs came across the plate because of poor defense.

I like Dwight Gill’s xERA
http://www.xera-baseball.com
. Gill worked for a few teams as a sabermetric analyst. But there are others out there like FIP (fielding independent pitching) and the like. Plus, xERA is more indicative of future performance as it represents a normalized distribution.

Look over Gill’s site - he does a good job using basic stats.