WHIP – The Forgotten Stat

01/27/2010 6:11 AM -  Eric Homola

By: Eric Homola

WHIP – The Forgotten Stat

It’s the baseball stat that is not talked about when people talk about pitchers, yet it is part of a basic 5×5 fantasy baseball league. The basic definition of WHIP is a ratio of [(walks + hits) / innings pitched]. It is used to determine the effectiveness the pitcher has in keeping the bases empty each inning.  WHIP is probably the most mainstream sabermetric stat used today, next to OPS.  The best WHIP of any pitcher in the modern era is held by Pedro Martinez in 2000, who posted a .7373 WHIP.  For a fantasy player, a WHIP under 1.30 is good average to try to obtain, while the best pitchers can maintain a WHIP around 1.00. The advantage of using WHIP over ERA is that it takes into account of all hits and walks, even after an error has occurred, which ERA will usually not count.  Sometimes pitchers can have a misleading ERA because they will give up several runs following an error and none of them will be credited to his total.  The disadvantage of WHIP is that is does not measure the pitcher’s ability to pitch out of a jam or distinguish between a walk or a homerun and also will count intentional walks.  To get a really accurate impression of a pitcher’s skills, a fantasy owner should look at their WHIP and then look at their Strand Percentage (S%) to find out how effective they were at keep runners on base from reaching home plate.

Here is a list of the starting pitchers with the best WHIP from the 2009 season and the player’s prior 2 years included:

NAME​​​                                    2009 ​          2008​                        2007

Dan Haren ​​                           1.00​              1.13​                           1.21

Chris Carpenter​​                    1.01 ​            1.30*​                        1.67*

Javier Vazquez                     ​​1.03​              1.32​                           1.14

Tim Lincecum​​                        1.05​             1.17​                           1.28

Ted Lilly​​                                  1.06​             1.23                           ​1.14

Zack Grienke​​                          1.07             ​1.28​                           1.30

Randy Wolf ​​                            1.10​             1.38​                           1.45*

Roy Halladay​​                          1.13​             1.05​                            1.24

Felix Hernandez ​​                    1.14​            1.39​                             1.38

Joel Pineiro​​                             1.14​             1.45                             ​1.39

CC Sabathia​​                             1.15​             1.11                              ​1.14

Josh Johnson                         ​​1.16​              1.35*                           ​2.43*

*did not pitch full season

My first reaction to the chart above is that those are pretty much the top ERA pitchers too, so why do I need to pay attention to this stat? At a closer look, Dan Haren the best WHIP pitcher last year had an ERA of 3.14 or 16th last year.  So there is a difference, between the stats. A better example would be Ricky Nolasco, last year he had a horrid 5.06 ERA but had a decent 1.25 WHIP or Scott Baker who had a 4.37 ERA with a 1.19 WHIP.  By maintaining a solid WHIP, pitchers like Haren, Nolasco and Baker have set themselves up to have a better ERA in future seasons if they can do a better job of keeping runners from scoring.  That may mean decreasing their home runs allowed or simply pitching better out of the stretch.  Either way, they have shown that the have the biggest skill that leads to a low ERA – the ability to keep men off base.

You will also notice that some of the pitchers on the list consistently have a low WHIP.  These pitchers are the elite ones that you can count on when selecting your ace starter.  Pitchers like Sabathia, Haren and Halladay are some of the safest pitchers in the early rounds of 2010 because a WHIP lower than 1.20 is expected from them.  WHIP can also be a sign of a big skills jump in a pitcher.  Looking at the huge drop from Felix Hernandez, Zack Greinke and Joel Pineiro suggests that all three pitchers made big gains in their effectiveness on the mound last year.  With all three pitchers, a smart fantasy owners needs to check their WHIP by looking at their H%.  That measures the percentage of balls in play off their pitches that turned into successful hits.  A typical pitcher will have a H% around 30%.  Some elite pitchers can consistently allow a H% that is a few percentage points below that mark.  When we look at the H% for the three WHIP risers from 2009 we see some differences.  Greinke’s H% was 31% – even higher than average and a good sign that he didn’t get lucky at all in 2009.  Pineiro and Hernandez both had 29%, a few points lower than their previous career norms.  While they didn’t get especially lucky, there is a decent chance that their WHIP will rise a bit in 2010, especially for Pinerio since he is a little too old to have a major skills jump.

Here are some starting pitchers who did not have the greatest WHIP in 2009:

Yovani Gallardo 1.31

Rich Harden  1.34

Andy Pettitte  1.38

AJ Burnett  1.40

Jon Garland  1.40

Doug Davis  1.50

Derek Lowe  1.52

Joba Chamberlain 1.54

These pitchers are all ones to watch out for, as they could have a surprisingly negative effect on your team’s WHIP in 2010.  Just as we did with the elite WHIP pitchers, we should look at the H% for these pitchers to determine if they were especially unlucky on balls put in play off of them in 2009.  Derek Lowe is a great example of this theory.  His H% in 2009 was 33%.  This is significantly higher than average and also significantly higher than his previous career norms, which were around 29-30%.  Lowe is a ground ball pitcher, meaning that a large amount of his success or failure is determined by having those plentiful ground ball find infielders’ gloves instead of gaps.  A simple reversal of luck could lower his WHIP back below 1.40 this year.  He would still hurt your fantasy team’s WHIP, but not as much.

In conclusion, don’t forget about WHIP when valuing your pitchers each year.  It is a less glamorous stat than wins or ERA but it is a better indication of a pitcher’s ability.  Smart fantasy owners want to drafted pitchers who have shown the ability to be good, not lucky.  While there is some luck involved with WHIP, there is less than in ERA and wins.