Hey, USS-How you doing?

[goonys evil twin]

Nobody will tell you 9 singles equals 9 homeruns. To claim so is completely ignorant

.

 

That is exactly what WHIP does-there is no distinction.

 

The stat itself doesn't differentiate. But the people who value WHIP aren't dumb enough to think that way.

[MeatampPotatoesMan]

This is ridiculous. The same argument between Cubbie Rich and a bunch of other people (with the same points) happened not so long ago. It obviously didn't convince him/her then and it won't now...and I don't recall anyone being won over by Cubbie Rich's arguments either.

[Diffusion]

First things first, please, let's not talk in wins. It's difficult enough to separate a pitcher's contribution from that of his defence from that of the opposition batter without even considering how that stacks up relative to what's happening in the other half of the innings or what happens once the pitcher has been relieved.

 

Aside from that though, CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

It does indeed count a single, double, triple, home run and walk as one and the same, while strangely disregarding hit by pitches (though I'm not really too fussed about it omitting wild pitches), and that's preposterous.

 

Furthermore, if you think about it, WHIP is just an extremely crude expression of the rate at which a pitcher allows home runs, the rate at which a pitcher allows hits on balls in play, the rate at which a pitcher allows balls in play (strikeout rate) and the rate at which a pitcher allows walks. Throw all that together, without making any adjustment for their relative significances, and you get WHIP. It can approximate a player's value, but that's about the extent of it. It's not at all accurate, and it's absolutely useless as a predictive value.

 

Quite why people become so attached to "catch-all metrics" (ironically titled, since they really don't catch-all) I don't know, because it's so much informative and so much more accurate to talk in terms of a handful of different statistics. All WHIP does is give you a feel for who the best pitchers in the game were at some stage. But you don't really need a feel for that. It's generally pretty obvious. As such, I don't see the value of WHIP at all, and I think the baseball world would be better off if people just stopped using it.

 

The same, only three times over, goes for wins for pitchers.

[frostwyrm]

It's just one factor to consider, but WHIP and BB/9 together will get you 90% of the picture I would guesstimate.

 

Nah, I think HR/9 is pretty important too. It's a decent indicator of a pitcher's tendency to make mistakes. Look at Maddux's HR totals. They explain a lot of his decline.

[CubbieRich]

CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

The check is in the mail.

[imb]

CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

The check is in the mail.

 

too bad no one is stupid enough to just judge pitchers bt their whip, just like no one is stupid enough to just judge pitchers by their win totals. Oops.

 

Whip is like any other stat, it's one stat that needs to be looked at in conjunction with a handful of other stats before it means anything.

[CubinNY]

First things first, please, let's not talk in wins. It's difficult enough to separate a pitcher's contribution from that of his defence from that of the opposition batter without even considering how that stacks up relative to what's happening in the other half of the innings or what happens once the pitcher has been relieved.

 

Aside from that though, CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

It does indeed count a single, double, triple, home run and walk as one and the same, while strangely disregarding hit by pitches (though I'm not really too fussed about it omitting wild pitches), and that's preposterous.

 

Furthermore, if you think about it, WHIP is just an extremely crude expression of the rate at which a pitcher allows home runs, the rate at which a pitcher allows hits on balls in play, the rate at which a pitcher allows balls in play (strikeout rate) and the rate at which a pitcher allows walks. Throw all that together, without making any adjustment for their relative significances, and you get WHIP. It can approximate a player's value, but that's about the extent of it. It's not at all accurate, and it's absolutely useless as a predictive value.

 

Quite why people become so attached to "catch-all metrics" (ironically titled, since they really don't catch-all) I don't know, because it's so much informative and so much more accurate to talk in terms of a handful of different statistics. All WHIP does is give you a feel for who the best pitchers in the game were at some stage. But you don't really need a feel for that. It's generally pretty obvious. As such, I don't see the value of WHIP at all, and I think the baseball world would be better off if people just stopped using it.

 

The same, only three times over, goes for wins for pitchers.

 

I disagree. WHIP is just another metric. It is not a catch-all metric anymore than winshares, wins, ERA or any other tool used to evaluate a pitcher. I'd be interested to see if WHIP has any predictive validity from year to year. If it does it could be a useful metric, if not, well it as least as useful as anything else.

 

All of these pitching metrics are just small pieces to the larger picture of whether a pitcher is "good". Good is a value judgment that some would use independent of any metric or analysis. But I think the value judgment is much better if it is backed up by some data. In the case of a pitcher I would hope the data used would be less dependent on the offense or the defense behind the pitcher. Regardless, I don't think anyone would use WHIP alone to make that judgment. But for some it is easier to set up a weak argument for the sole purpose of knocking it down. Which is the case with Cubbierich more often than not.

[UBlink]

CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

The check is in the mail.

 

Did you miss this part:

 

The same, only three times over, goes for wins for pitchers.

[Magnetic Curses]

CubbieRich is a lot closer to the truth than a lot of you would care to admit - WHIP is a pretty lousy and unreliable statistic in itself.

 

The check is in the mail.

 

too bad no one is stupid enough to just judge pitchers bt their whip, just like no one is stupid enough to just judge pitchers by their win totals. Oops.

 

Whip is like any other stat, it's one stat that needs to be looked at in conjunction with a handful of other stats before it means anything.

 

exactly. no one who values WHIP is going to say it's some sort of catch-all.

 

as i said, i think it's very valuable when looked at in conjunction with G/F ratio and K/9--and, as was added by another, BB/9.

 

if a pitcher strikes a lot of guys out, plus gets a lot of ground balls, plus doesn't walk very many--his WHIP will be very good. but WHIP isn't enough to base a judgement of good or bad on, and no one is saying that. what they are saying is that wins are not good indicator of future success given different circumstances.

[frostwyrm]

Don't forget BABIP, especially for relievers, since their small sample sizes are susceptible to the effects of luck.

[UK1679666180]

Different stats indicate things, I use K/9 to help judge how good is stuff is, BB/9 indicates how good his control is and HR/9 helps indicate how well he keeps the ball down. Opp. avg. against can also be used to evalaute stuff.

 

Wins tells me how healthy the pitcher has been (like IP) and how good the team is that he plays for, it can tell you how good a pitcher is, just not as much as how healthy he has been or how good the teams have been that he's played for.

 

Just one of many pitching stats.

[craig]

I think WHIP is awfully useful as a metric. But Cubbierich touches on it's greatest limitation: factoring in HR-allowed. I think looking at HR-rate for any pitcher is important.

 

Sometimes focusing on WHIP, K-rate, and GB-rate but forgetting to check the HR-rate can cause mistakes. (I used to think the board always overrated Dotel, whose HR-rates were lousy but whose WHIP and K-rates were great).

 

Maddux is a guy whose actual quality isn't nearly as good as you'd expect based on WHIP and GB rate. Because his HR rate is awful. He's also a great picture of how HR-rate doesn't necessarily correlate GB-rate. There are many pitchers like Maddux who have nice GB-rates but who still get HR'd often.

 

The HR issue is especially crucial for the Cubs, since many of their pitchers are vulnerable. (I suppose that's true for most teams, but...).

Maddux is vulnerable. Prior is very HR vulnerable, and is unlikely to actually be as good as his WHIP/K-rates might make you expect. Matt Clement was a strong GB-guy, but he too often lost on the HR. Wood loses a lot of his losses on HR's.

 

Dempster was great last year becuase he was uncharacteristically anti-HR. Hard to guess whether that will hold. If he reverts to his HR-factory profile from rotation days, he'll blow his share of saves this year.