Pitching and Winning

Best ERA- but didn't mean a championship

It is safe to say that both team's and and pitcher's need to do the same thing to win, and that is to prevent the other team from crossing home plate. That is why ERA has the biggest correlation between winning and a statistic for both individuals and a group. After we determined that runs were the most important thing in winning games, today we decide that runs against is just as important. Along with ERA the other stats measured today will be: saves, batting average against, WHIP, batting average on balls in play, Fielding Independent Pitching, and the ERAs of both the team's relievers and starters. All stats except for Saves naturally have a negative correlation due to their nature of lower is better, so the absolute value of those stats were taken while Saves had their normal correlation.

1. ERA correlation=.8125

Gonzalez

The Rays had the league's lowest ERA at 3.19 and had the 9th most wins with 90. The Washington Nationals, led by Gio Gonzalez and Steven Strasburg, had the second best ERA and led the majors with 98 wins. The World Series Champion Giants had a 3.68 ERA which is good enough for 7th on the list. Despite a 3.76 ERA, the Mariners were only able to win 75 games.

2. WHIP correlation=.803

Again similar to ERA, David Price and the Rays led the majors with a WHIP of 1.17 and the Nationals took second at 1.22. Felix Hernandez again got the Mariners in the top 6 despite their lackluster record. The Brewers were the only team with a WHIP above 1.3 to win more than 80 games.

3. Saves correlation= .77889

Not really surprise here as you can only get a save if you win the game. The Reds had the most saves in the majors (56) and Aroldis Chapman had 38 of them and they won 97 games. The Pirates had 45 saves (Joel Hanrahan having 36 of them) despite only winning 79 games. The Orioles finished second in saves as Jim Johnson got 51 of their 55 saves. The Angels won 89 games despite recording only 38 saves as they were a little bit of an outlier.

4. Starter ERA correlation= .71457

What a surprise here, again the Rays and the Dodgers take the top two spots. Clayton Kershaw led the majors in ERA and it helped the Dodgers get the third spot with a starter ERA of 3.41 and 86 wins. The Mets R.A. Dickey boosted them into the 11 spot but they only had 74 wins on the year. The Orioles, who are looking to have a pretty bad this year, made it far with bad starters sporting an ERA of 4.42 but won 93 games.

5. Batting Average Against Correlation=.704

So again the Rays, Nationals, and Dodgers take the top three spots with opponent batting averages below .235. The Rockies, who have been near the bottom of the list in almost every category are in dead last here with teams hitting .284 of their pitchers, which is .014 points higher than the second to last Twins. Not surprisingly, the Rockies only won 64 games.

6. Fielding Independent Pitching correlation=.684

Just wanted to show
 the Cuba Red

This statistic is used to determine the ERA of a pitcher if it wasn't for shoddy defense, or in the other direction great defense. The Rays and Nationals again take the top two spots but three and four look a little different this time. Adam Wainwright's FIP of 3.10 led the Cardinals to the 3 spot and Justin Verlander's 2.94 FIP put the Tigers in fourth. 

7. Reliever ERA correlation=.6525

Aroldis Chapman had the third  best ERA among reliever's last year (1.51) and it helps put the Reds on top of the list. The Braves took second with Craig Kimbrel and Eric O'Flaherty both finishing in the top 5. Fernando Rodney had a major league best .60 ERA for the Rays and the team had a 2.88 reliever ERA which was third in the league. The World Champion Giants had the 15th best bullpen but that was likely do to Brain Wilson missing most of the season. 

8. Batting Average on Balls in Play correlation=.48

Not a terrible correlation but not a good one. The Tigers were 27th in the league in BABIP and still had 81 wins and the Yanks won 95 despite finishing 19th. The Rays and Angels were first in the league with a .277 BABIP and the Athletics who won 94 games finished third witha .279 BABIP.

What Makes A Pitcher Win?

Gio Gonzalez led the majors with 21 wins lat year

One of the first recorded statistics in sports was the pitcher's win, but where do those wins come from. Today we will look at what statistics correlate the most with wins. There has been a bit of a movement recently to stop considering the win an important statistic due to factors like run support and defense. But is it possible that wins come from stats like ERA and strikeouts already, and that there is no need to discount wins, but rather view them as the culmination of other statistics. The statistics that will be compared to wins today are ERA, K/9, K/BB, AVG, WHIP, BABIP, tERA, and Fastball Velocity. Stats appear in order of Correlation. 88 pitchers who qualified for the ERA tile were used in this study.
1. (ERA Earned Runs/ IP)x9
I cannot say that I am overly surprised with this one considering that it, along with wins and strikeouts, is one of the numbers in the pitching triple crown. Gio Gonzalez led the majors with 21 wins last year and had the 9th lowest ERA at 2.89. Clayton Kershaw, who led the majors with a 2.53 ERA had 14 wins. The biggest wrench in the data was Cliff Lee, who was last among the 88 pitchers with only 6 wins, but his 3.16 ERA was 15th overall. It earned the number one spot with a correlation of .64351.

2. WHIP (Walks + Hits)/ Innings Pitch
Clayton Kershaw again led the majors in this category with a 1.02 WHIP. Gonzalez placed 12th at 1.13. Jake Peavy and Cliff Lee threw curveballs in this category both placing in the top 10 but Peavy only had 11 wins and as said earlier Lee had 6. The correlation was -.55608.

3. True ERA ERA adjusted for Defense and other variables

Should have had more than 14 wins

Coming in third with a correlation of -.53644, tERA was led again by Clayton Kershaw who had a terrible offense in LA. Gio Gonzalez placed fifth with a tERA of 3.34 and Cliff Lee showed up again screwing up the data with the third lowest tERA. Jeremy Guthrie, who only had 8 wins, had the highest tERA of the 88 pitchers with 6.33.

4. Batting Average Against
Gonzalez led the majors with a .202 BA against so that might make you think that this should have the strongest correlation. Another reason that this might be seen to have a high correlation is that Cliff Lee and his 6 wins doesn't show up until 55 on this list. The problem with this is that most of the data is spread throughout with Nationals' Edwin Jackson and Ross Detweiler taking 22 and 23 with 10 wins and BA of .237.

5. Strikeouts per 9 innings
There was a huge dropoff here going from a -.52691 correlation to a .295676 correlation for K/9. Max Scherzer led with 11.08 and had 16 wins. Yu Darvish was second with 10.4 and also had 16 wins. Gonzalez was third in K/9. Clayton Richard had 14 wins but only had 4.4 K/9.

6. Batting Average Against on Balls in Play
This stat is often used to project how a player will do in following seasons or how a player will do whe traded to a new team  but it does not correlate that well with wins. In fact, the correlation is only -.27. Jared Weaver led the majors with a .241 BABIP and as second in the league with 20 wins. However, Ervin Santana, who was second in BABIP, only had 9 wins.

7. Strikeouts/ Walks
This stat really seems like it should be a strong indicator of who wins or loses but the the pitchers with the highest two K/BB, Cliff Lee and Joe Blanton only had 6 and 10 wins respectively. This again is just because Cliff Lee had a terrible offense in Philadelphia, at least when he pitched. Gonzales doesn't appear til 46 on the list, having a K/BB of 2.72.

8. Fastball Velocity

Proves You Don't need to throw hard to win

This only has a correlation of .09 and that is really to be expected. We should all know that wins has very little to do with how hard you throw the ball, but how you make it dance and where you put it. It doesn't hurt necessarily as David Price had the hardest fastball in the majors with 95.5 MPH and had 20 wins. Jeff Samardzija had the second fastest fastball but only 9 wins, mostly due to the Cubs sucking ass. Gio's fastball averaged 93 MPH. Knuckleballer RA Dickey had 20 wins with a fastball of only 83.4 MPH.