In modern baseball, an ERA under 2.00 is considered exceptional and is rare. An ERA between 2.00 and 3.00 is also considered excellent and is only achieved by the best pitchers in the league. An ERA between 3.00 and 4.00 is above-average.
The lowest single-season ERA in league history was posted by Tim Keefe, whose 0.86 ERA in 105 innings pitched for the National League’s Troy Trojans in 1880 led his closest competitor by . 52 runs. In the American League, Dutch Leonard’s 0.96 ERA is a single-season record.
Ed Walsh holds the MLB earned run average record with a 1.816.
J. VerlanderHOUMLB Stat Leaders 2022
EARNED RUN AVERAGE | ERA |
---|---|
1 J. VerlanderHOU | 1.82 |
2 D. CeaseCHW | 2.06 |
3 J. UriasLAD | 2.25 |
4 A. ManoahTOR | 2.31 |
WHIP reflects a pitcher’s propensity for allowing batters to reach base, therefore a lower WHIP indicates better performance. While earned run average (ERA) measures the runs a pitcher gives up, WHIP more directly measures a pitcher’s effectiveness against batters.
Earned Run Average
| colspan=“3”>Earned Run Average All Time Leaders | ‘Top 1,000’ | | — | | Name | ERA (Raw ERA) | Rank | | Ed Walsh | 1.82 (1.816) | 1 | | Addie Joss | 1.89 (1.887) | 2 | | Jim Devlin | 1.89 (1.890) | 3 |
Outfielder Ty Cobb, whose career ended in 1928, has the highest batting average in Major League Baseball (MLB) history. He batted . 366 over 24 seasons, mostly with the Detroit Tigers.
Most Seasons Played
Player | Years Played | Seasons |
---|---|---|
Nolan Ryan | 1966-1993 | 27 |
Cap Anson | 1871-1897 | 27 |
Deacon McGuire | 1884-1912 | 26 |
Tommy John | 1963-1989 | 26 |
The formula for finding ERA is: 9 x earned runs / innings pitched. If a pitcher exits a game with runners on base, any earned runs scored by those runners will count against him. ERA should be an ideal evaluation of pitchers.
The 1899 Cleveland Spiders own the worst single-season record of all time (minimum 120 games) and for all eras, finishing at 20–134 (.
Completely unofficial and no record books have ever been kept. The following pitchers had no problem with their pitch count, at least for one inning, as they started the inning, threw exactly three pitches and recorded three outs.
Infinity ERA, also known as infinite ERA, is when a pitcher allows one or more earned runs without recording a single out. ERA is calculated by dividing earned runs by innings pitched and multiplying by 9, but if no outs are recorded then you would be dividing by 0, which equates to infinity.
H/9 represents the average number of hits a pitcher allows per nine innings pitched. It is determined by dividing a pitcher’s hits allowed by his innings pitched and multiplying that by nine. It’s a very useful tool for evaluating pitchers, whose goal is to prevent runs, which are usually scored by hits.
Jacob deGromTop-100 2022 Starting Pitcher Rankings
Rank | Player | Team |
---|---|---|
1 | Jacob deGrom | NYM |
2 | Max Scherzer | NYM |
3 | Corbin Burnes | MIL |
4 | Shane McClanahan | TBR |
Gus Weyhing (277) holds the dubious record for most hit batsmen in a career. Chick Fraser (219), Pink Hawley (210), and Walter Johnson (205) are the only other pitchers to hit 200 or more batters in their careers.
Strikeout to walk ratio (K/BB): You can’t simply look at strikeout-to-walk ratio and make firm judgments about a pitcher. But as supporting evidence goes, it’s one of the most useful “eyeball” stats out there.
Below is the list of the top 100 Major League Baseball pitchers in Walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) with at least 1,000 innings pitched. Addie Joss is the all-time leader with a career WHIP of 0.9678.
Usually, an average WHIP is around 1.30, while a good WHIP is under 1.10, and an elite WHIP is below 1. A WHIP over 1.50 is generally considered poor. Though they aren’t completely related, usually a pitcher with a good WHIP will have a good ERA as well.
Definition. Slugging percentage represents the total number of bases a player records per at-bat. Unlike on-base percentage, slugging percentage deals only with hits and does not include walks and hit-by-pitches in its equation. Slugging percentage differs from batting average in that all hits are not valued equally.
Definition. OPS adds on-base percentage and slugging percentage to get one number that unites the two. It’s meant to combine how well a hitter can reach base, with how well he can hit for average and for power.
The Answer: A simple way to compute a player’s batting average is to divide the player’s total hits (not the number of bases) by his/her total at bats. A walk does not count as an at bat or hit, and does not affect a player’s batting average.