RealGM

Posted: **Fri May 8, 2009 7:11 pm**

With five weeks of the season nearly in the books, which pitchers have been the most dominant in baseball? We have seen a new story on Zack Greinke on a near daily basis, but Johan Santana has been even better, at least according to the statistic I created to identify the game's most dominant pitchers.

SWHIP essentially combines WHIP with strikeouts per nine innings pitched, and it achieves precisely this.

* Tim Lincecum led the big leagues in SWHIP in 2008 with a mark of 0.031. Pedro Martinez has the best career SWHIP amongst starters with -0.020 and also the best single season with -0.507 in 2000.

Below are the top-10 starters and relievers in SWHIP through Thursday's games.

Starters
1. Johan Santana: -0.459
2. Zack Greinke: -0.333
3. Dan Haren: -0.184
4. Tim Lincecum: -0.079
5. Javier Vazquez: -0.026

Relievers
1. Jonathan Broxton: -1.286
2. Brian Bruney: -0.875
3. Scott Downs: -0.728
4. Heath Bell: -0.625
5. Andrew Bailey: -0.471

http://baseball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_ ... is_season/

Posted: **Fri May 8, 2009 7:30 pm**

How about a stat where you add the most innings pitched to the number of ground ball outs. That would probably be a dominant pitcher.

Posted: **Sat May 9, 2009 7:27 am**

Where's BJ?

Posted: **Sat May 9, 2009 4:23 pm**

Hmm...

SWHIP = (Walks + Hits + Hit Batters - Strikeouts) / Innings Pitched

I think that misses a lot of different things about the nature of a pitcher.

I'd want some kind of weighted linear metric that counts average IP per start, HRs allowed, groundball vs. flyball percentage...

I suppose it's a decent enough metric, though, I mean it considers all baserunners and then rewards a pitcher for having a high K rate and then pushes it out to a per-inning rate. But yeah, a lot of data is missing. I think at some point you have to jam something about opp run production in there.

RealGM

Which Pitchers Have Been Most Dominant This Season?

Which Pitchers Have Been Most Dominant This Season?

Re: Which Pitchers Have Been Most Dominant This Season?

Re: Which Pitchers Have Been Most Dominant This Season?

Re: Which Pitchers Have Been Most Dominant This Season?