29 Responses to “1,000 IP With WHIP = 1.5+”

1. DavidRF Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:36 am

   John Sickels Prospect Retro on Jimmy Haynes:
   http://www.minorleagueball.com/2007/4/28/134712/692

2. Paul Drye Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:46 am

   Wow, that Tommy Byrne...1037 walks in 1362 IP! Here he is on a list of guys who can't find home plate with a GIS unit and a sherpa, and still no-one's close to him at that rate for that amount of pitching.

3. DavidRF Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:53 am

   @2
   Byrne led the league in HBP five times as well, so his WHIP is understated a bit. That was the "post-war walk boom" so everyone's walk rates were high, but Byrne led the league so it wasn't just the context. Somehow the Yankees got decent innings out of him though. I guess he set up a lot of DP's for Rizzuto and Coleman. Then later on, after the bottom teams of the league gave up on him, the Yankees got him back and somehow got a few more decent years out of him. Go figure.

4. DavidRF Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:56 am

   Several 1920s/1930s guys on the list who had halfway decent careers. Scoring levels were so high that 1.5 WHIP wasn't horrible. Guys like Earl Whitehill and Bump Hadley. They weren't stars but were solid middle-of-rotation guys.

5. Morten Jonsson Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 12:10 pm

   Dixie Davis and Wild Bill Hallahan were pretty good pitchers too.

   I wonder if there's a way to refine this a little. It's strongly skewed toward pitchers from the twenties and thirties (especially Browns, I think--Sportsman's Park was a brutal place to pitch), from ca. 1950 (when walk rates were sky-high, as DavidRF points out), and Rockies. That tells us something about the conditions of the time, but not that much about the pitchers. I'd be more interested in seeing, say, the biggest discrepancies between WHIP and ERA. (This isn't a complaint--I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to do my own search for that.)

6. Andy Patton Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 12:26 pm

   The best thing I learned from this was that there was a pitcher from the 20's named Lil Stoner!

   But on a serious note, I always wondered how long it would take teams to realize Ron Villone didn't belong in anyone's bullpen. Apparently it took 14 years and ten teams...

   ~Andy

7. Dr. Doom Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 2:34 pm

   On the list above, #2 and #9 appeared in the same rotation... two consecutive years. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2000-01 Milwaukee Brewers!

8. Paul Drye Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 3:14 pm

   @Andy Patton: Villone was hyped by Baseball America when he came up, so there was a perception that he could turn it around at any point. He was also a lefty, so he had that going for him too -- you know how many chances they get.

   And from age 33 onwards, after they stopped trying to use him as a starter, he was passable: 102 ERA+. Contrast with his age 30-32 seasons where his ERA+ was (ick) 82.

9. Paul Drye Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 3:18 pm

   Come to think of it, Shawn Estes had just about the same start to his career: much admired as a prospect and a lefty, and in his case actually not bad until he was 24 (if walk-eriffic). I seem to recall his arm fell off after that, though.

10. MikeD Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 3:46 pm

    A very quick scan of this list, but I noticed lots of 1930s and 1990s names on the list. Very high offensive times.

11. Gerry Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 6:34 pm

    There's a big (and quite understanable) gap lasting 10 seasons, from 1963 through 1972, when no one on the list was active. By way of contrast, 18 of these men were pitching in 1928.

12. Jeff Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 9:08 pm

    When I saw this title the first player I thought of was Jeff "OMG He Sucks" Fassero. But he was decent in the first few years of his career, and so his career WHIP was only 1.380.

    I gave him this nickname in 2004 when I was sitting in a poker room in Blackhawk, Colorado and was reading the newspaper. I read that the Rockies had signed Fassero, who was 41 at the time, and I yelled "Oh my god, he sucks!!!" And he rewarded us with a 3-8 record and a WHIP of 1.622 that year.

    P.S. He was still pitching in the major leagues (and getting bombed) at the age of 43. There must have been more to it than the fact he was a lefty. My theory is that he was somehow blackmailing the commissioner of baseball, but of course I don't have any proof.

13. hylen Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 9:30 pm

    Lil Stoner (or Li'l Stoner, as I like to think of him) followed by Sheriff Blake. I like it. 😉

14. Jeff Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    Another guy I should have thought of right away, as a Rockies fan, is Jamey Wright. He pitched a few years for the Rockies at the beginning of his career, and might have been a worse pitcher than even Jeff Fassero. I think he was congenitally incapable of finishing an inning without two or three runners getting on base.

    So of course, he's still hanging around 15 years later.

15. steven Says:
    March 13th, 2011 at 10:08 pm

    Phil Collins makes another appearance. Twice in one week!

16. TheGoof Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 4:15 am

    So THAT'S why he retired from singing. He's taking up baseball again.

17. JDV Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 11:50 am

    @1...very interesting link. @3, your mention of HBP seems very relevant here. Jamey Wright jumps even higher if HBP were included. Baserunners allowed / inning pitched (BAIP)...I guess it didn't sound as good as WHIP, but it tells a more complete story.

18. John Autin Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 3:23 pm

    @13, Hylen -- Sheriff Blake did "follow" Lil Stoner onto the Phillies' roster in July 1931, but our hero and his 1.976 WHIP had been chased into the Texas League just a month earlier. Both were Cardinals farmhands in '32, but at different levels.

    P.S. Sheriff Blake was on the mound during one of the biggest World Series comebacks of all time -- game 4 of the 1929 WS -- and was charged with the loss, as the A's rallied from an 8-0 deficit with a 10-run 7th inning. Blake was the 3rd pitcher of the inning, after the lead had been chopped down to 1 run. Inheriting a runner on 1st, Blake allowed a single to Al Simmons, then another to Jimmie Foxx that tied the score; then Pat Malone came in and served up a 2-run double to Jimmy Dykes that put the A's on top. Lefty Grove relieved and struck out 4 of the 6 men he faced to earn the save. That win put the A's up by 3 games to 1, and they closed it out in game 5 by scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th. Pat Malone (starting on 1 day's rest) carried a shutout and 2-0 lead into the 9th, but Mule Haas tied it with a 2-run HR, and Bing Miller doubled home Al Simmons for the walk-off win.

19. Biff Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 6:12 pm

    @7
    "On the list above, #2 and #9 appeared in the same rotation... two consecutive years. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2000-01 Milwaukee Brewers!"

    Wright and Haynes were just trying to somehow make up for the hits and walks their lineup was supposed to provide. I believe the 2001 Brewers were the first to feature an entire team offense that had more strikeouts than hits for a single season.

20. John Autin Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    @19, Biff, re: '01 Brewers having more Ks than Hits:

    That was quite a feat for its time, but the 2010 D'backs raised that bar a notch or two, with 163 more Ks than Hits -- a gap so wide that even if all of Justin Upton's 152 Ks were wiped off the books, they still would have had more Ks than Hits, and still would have led the majors in strikeouts.

    The D'backs had at least 131 Ks by every spot in the batting order, and at least 122 from every position in the field.

21. Mike Felber Says:
    March 15th, 2011 at 3:23 am

    I want to echo & amplify what others here have said: It would be much more informative to have these all time lists be adjusted at least for the era. Otherwise it totally distorts what by implication it purports to measure: how good or bad a player is at a certain skill.

    This is not fair to the athletes, & tells us nada useful about who was good or bad at what.

22. John Autin Says:
    March 15th, 2011 at 10:26 am

    Mike @21 & others -- You make a valid point about the importance of context when looking at raw numbers.

    At the same time, I don't agree that this list "by implication ... purports to measure [ ] how good or bad a player is at a certain skill." I don't see anything in Steve's text that says or implies that this is a list of bad pitchers. And by presenting a pretty full statistical record (including ERA+), the list does give us some tools to put the raw numbers into context.

    Morten asked for the biggest discrepancies between WHIP and ERA. Here are links to 2 P-I searches (I hope they work!): the first compares WHIP and ERA+, the second compares WHIP and raw ERA.

    Pitchers with 1,000+ IP and ERA+ more than 100 times their WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/watji

    Pitchers with 1,000+ IP and ERA less than 2.2 times their WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/Y2oXc

23. John Autin Says:
    March 15th, 2011 at 10:40 am

    One of my links @22 didn't work, so I'll try to present them both again:

    Pitchers with 1,000+ IP and ERA+ more than 100 times their WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/blk3x

    Pitchers with 1,000+ IP and ERA less than 2.2 times their WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/Y2oXc

24. John Autin Says:
    March 15th, 2011 at 11:05 am

    P.S. to my @22-23:
    One problem with trying to find "the greatest discrepancies" between WHIP and ERA (or ERA+) -- or, the problem with interpreting the lists I presented -- is that we haven't established what is a "normal" relation between those numbers. Is it linear? Exponential? I have no idea.

    I used ratios that were tailored to produce lists of 50 to 100 pitchers. But I don't know what those ratios mean, if anything.

    It also occurs to me that I should have included a minimum WHIP filter, in order to stay on the topic of pitchers with a high WHIP, so I'll post a couple more links with a minimum 1.4 WHIP (and min. 1,000 IP):

    ERA+ more than 70 times WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/VtLSF
    (Bob Wickman has the highest ratio in this group; his 126 ERA+ is exactly 90 times his 1.4 WHIP.)

    ERA less than 2.8 times WHIP:
    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/YPi2r

25. Mike Felber Says:
    March 16th, 2011 at 4:14 am

    True that it is not directly indicated that these guys are bad pitchers John. And you cannot be TOO bad & get a lot of IP. But I referred to a certain skill, WHIP, & clearly this list is showing who got a reasonable # of innings & was the worst at keeping this stat down. Unless it is specified that this was not era or otherwise adjusted, many will assume that this shows how good these guys are at keeping men off base in general.

    Why not just make it, & all similar lists, era adjusted? That would reflect on the pitcher in this basic skill, not be a list very distorted by era differentials.

26. John Autin Says:
    March 16th, 2011 at 10:17 am

    Mike -- Your point is valid. Unfortunately, the Play Index search engine doesn't provide a direct means of making era adjustments for most of the searchable stats. With a few exceptions -- OPS+, ERA+, and the WAR group -- one can only search on the raw numbers.

27. Mike Felber Says:
    March 16th, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    Ah well, thanks for the information. I cannot demand others do the work I am unable to do, or unwilling to learn now!

28. wat Says:
    March 16th, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    Why has Doug Davis hung around all of these years? He has always seemed pretty pointless to me.

29. John Autin Says:
    March 17th, 2011 at 11:42 am

    @28, Wat -- I'm not a big Doug Davis fan, but ... For the 6 years 2004-09, Davis averaged almost 200 IP and a 109 ERA+ -- and he did it for an average salary of less than $5 million. There are probably 100 MLB pitchers earning more money while providing less value.

    Also, Davis never really had a bad year until last year, when he was hurt. A 10-year run of reliably acceptable performance, and usually better than average, is something of real value.