pitching benchmarks

Obviously, anything below 1.0 on the WHIP is outstanding. Anything below 1.2 is great and if it's below 1.4 in college, you're probably doing just fine.

Now, get rid of the metal bats, and you want that thing down about 1.2-1.3 ...

I think they are concerned if he gets batters outs and walks are minimal.

K's are nice but the end all be all

And while getting batters out is the ultimate goal ... pitchers that induce a lot of ground outs and pop-ups through good location control, mixing up speeds, and excellent ball movement will generally have lower pitch counts and be able to throw deeper into a game with less stress on their arms. K's are nice ... especially if you like to see the ump's unique little dance on a called 3rd strike ... but getting a lot of K's often means pitching deeper into counts for the same net number of outs.

Yeah ... K's are nice, but not a stat that I particularly follow in trying to figure out pitcher effectiveness.

What I find is better is BB/Innings Pitched.

I want to see how stingy a pitcher is, regardless of how he's getting his outs.

I want to see how stingy a pitcher is, regardless of how he's getting his outs.

Good point.

The WHIP is the most telling stat for a power pitcher. Power pitchers will walk more and give up less hits. Finesse pitchers will walk very few and give up more hits. The WHIP is the measuring factor. If one guy gives up 4 hits and 4 walks and another pitcher gave up 7 hits and 1 walk, who had the better game? I guess it would depend on what the hits were.

I have seen coaches sit down very effective pitchers for too many walks even though they actually had a better whip and were more effective.

We all know that lead-off walks score 70% of the time. So do leadoff singles. By the same token, walks are not doubles. That is why whip and era are good measuring sticks to effectiveness. Much more so than k to bb. What does that really measure? jmo

I agree that the number of K's in a vacuum is not a valuable measure ... a guy that just gets outs without putting runners in scoring position very often and is able to keep his pitch count low will in the long run be a more productive pitcher.

What's great is when you see a pitcher that is able to adapt his approach to the game situation, i.e., bases empty works on getting batters to hit into the defense ... bases loaded will bear down and aggressively go after the batter. Raw numbers of K's isn't as important as the ability (and confidence) that a pitcher can get a game critical K when you really need one.

Would be interesting to see a list of the WHIP and K/BB ratios for the guy's over 100 - I know Billy Wagner walks VERY few batters.

BTW - when computing WHIP, can I assume you include HBP??
Is this a stat that would be good to highlight for a prospectice college coach?