Pitching Stats

WARNING!!! THIS COLUMN CONTAINS STATISTICS AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES. USE DISCRETION IN CONTINUING.

Hah, hah, girlfriend. Just kidding. I’m projecting my own "eyes-glaze-over-when-someone-starts-droning-on-about-stats” paranoia on to you. Trust me, this will be fun.

We’ve focused on pitching the last couple entries (with a side trip to the bar and the ball park). To wrap up, here are some stats that will help you judge how well a pitcher is doing.

Remember how to read a box score? Pitchers have box scores, too, and include the same stats (hits, runs, strike outs) but from the perspective of the pitching mound. Two stats, however, are specific to pitching. They are Earned Runs Average (ERA) and Win/Loss Percentage.

EARNED RUN AVERAGE: The last thing a pitcher wants is for a batter to get a hit. And the pitcher REALLY doesn’t want the runner to make it all the way to home plate because that’s a run. The Earned Run Average (ERA) represents the average number of runs a pitcher gives up in nine innings. The other team must “earn the run” or basically beat the pitcher for it to be counted. (Fielding errors don’t count.)

ERA is calculated by taking all the earned runs a pitcher has against him, dividing it by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine If you want to remember how to figure it out, you can always look it up by going HERE. Even if you don’t remember how the ERA is calculated, remember that the lower the number, the better. So around a 1.5 to 2.0 ERA is really good , but a 6.2 ERA means a pitcher is struggling.

Another thing to remember is that ERA is the opposite of Batting Average. The lower the ERA, the better (with the 1.0s or lower 2.0s being really good) For batting average, the higher the better (with being in the .300s being really good.).

WIN/LOSS PERCENTAGE: For every game, one pitcher is awarded a win and one pitcher is awarded a loss. A pitcher gets the win if his team takes the lead while he is in the game and maintains the lead. The losing pitcher then is the guy who gave up the run that put the opposing team ahead and helped the enemy win the game. Ouch! Got to be rough to be a designated “loser” and have it go on your permanent record. You will often hear something like, “Felix Hernandez is 7 and 7” or read something like Hernandez (7-7) That means in this season Felix has been awarded the win in 7 games and was awarded the loss in 7 of those games. (His current ERA is 2.94, by the way.)

Don’t forget those relief pitchers eating sunflower seeds and spitting in the bullpen. If your team is ahead and you are tapped on the shoulder to get into the game, the team expects you to keep that lead. Relief pitchers have their own stat called a “save.” A pitcher is awarded a save when his team wins and he was the last pitcher. (There are some other things that go into it, such as you can’t be awarded a win and a save at the same time, but basically you got the idea.) Marino Rivera seems to be the King of Saves currently. He has 28 saves in 28 save opportunities -- damn, he’s scary.

Remember the box score from the newspaper? Pitching stats are also listed for each game.


IP - Innings Pitched.
H - Hits that the batters got off him.
R - Runs made while he was pitching. (Adding up the totals from all the pitchers, this column should add up to the final score.)
ER - Earned Runs or those runs that were not due to fielder error. (May not always add up to the score,)
BB - Base on Balls, or how many times a pitcher walked a batter.
SO - Strike Outs, or how many time a pitcher struck out a batter.
ERA - The current Earned Run Average of the pitcher after this game.

Note that in the game above, Putz actually got the Win event (indicated by the W in front of his Win-Loss Percentage) even though he was the closer. He was the pitcher at the time the Mariners pulled ahead of the Rays with a game-ending two-run homerun. Wins pack more of a statistical punch for a pitcher than Saves. Wheeler, the Rays' closer, got the Loss since he was the pitcher at the time the opposing team scored the go ahead run.

Three other phrases that you will hear:

Shutout: A shut out means that the opposing team had no runs. Runners may have made it onto base and batters may have made hits, but no one made it successfully home. The score on their end was a big fat 0. That ain’t easy to do. That’s a combination of good fielding and defense, and good pitching.

No-hitter: A no hitter means that there were no hits by the opposing team. Runners might be on base due to balls and errors, but no runner had a legitimate hit. So when you look at the scoreboard at a game, under hits it says a big fat 0. This is really difficult to do, and you might see just a couple no hitters in a baseball season. (This is when a low scoring ball game can be very exciting.) When a pitcher is pitching this good, the manager might leave him in the game to pitch all nine innings. When someone is throwing a no hitter, it is tradition (and superstition) not to mention it as such so as not to jinx it and it is tradition for other players not to talk to the pitcher in order not to jinx him.

Perfect Game: This is almost impossible. More people have orbited the moon that thrown a perfect game. (That’s my most favorite baseball stat in the world.) It means, no hits and no runners on base. If the pitcher pitches the whole game, that means 27 batters up and 27 batters down. It means when you look up at the scoreboard, you see big fat 0s across the board. Last pitcher to throw a perfect game was Randy Johnson of the Diamondbacks back in 2004. Couldn’t happen to a nicer (or a bigger) fellow.