Have you ever sat back and thought about WHIP, or have you just accepted it because of the fact that almost every fantasy league in the world uses it to its solid? My contention is that WHIP, while a nice measure of a pitchers general level of success, could easily be augmented by a similar to figure “new” metric which I believe might be more reflective of a pitchers ability to dominate hitters. Perhaps I should start by defining WHIP before I move on to my new option.

WHIP, a “roto-geek” stat, has become all the rage in the past ten years. You measure WHIP by adding Walks and Hits together and then dividing by Innings Pitched.

WHIP = (Walks + Hits) / Innings Pitched

WHIP is but one of the many tools that can be used to forecast the success of a pitcher. But I believe that the vagaries of hits allowed such as a ball lost in the sun, a wind gust, a misstep by a fielder, the coaches positioning of players, can possibly offer a “false” negative in terms or a pitchers overall lack of effectiveness. Should a pitcher be punished because a ball gets lost in the sun even if the fielder had his shades on?

If you think about it, the pitcher is directly in control of few things during the game. Two of those “events” that a pitcher is directly able to influence the outcome of deal with whether or not he strikes outs the batter or walks him (we will not worry about the vagaries of umpires strikezones, or batters willingness or unwillingness to swing at pitches in our current discussion). About the only other event that the pitcher relies solely upon himself and not his fielders is the Hit by Pitch, but since WHIP does not count HBP, I won’t consider it here either.

Now it stands to reason, does it not, that the fewer times a batter puts the ball in play the fewer hits he gives up? Yes, I really wrote that. Therefore the pitcher who successfully limits the amount of balls in play stands a greater chance of given up fewer baserunners, and by inference, fewer runs. Obviously any pitcher who limits a hitters ability to score a run by not allowing him to get on base would be someone you would want on your staff. So to address this issue I “invented” a new metric called SWIP.

In PART I of this three-part series I will define what SWIP is and why it is useful. In PART II, I will break down the SWIP leaders amongst Starting Pitchers. PART III will deal with the plight of Relief Pitchers.


PART I – What is SWIP?

Following the simple methodology of WHIP, I have created a new measure of a pitchers dominance called SWIP.

S- Strikeouts (also abbreviated as K)
W- Walks (also abbreviated as BB)
IP- Innings Pitched

Numerically speaking, the formula for SWIP works along the same lines as WHIP. Therefore SWIP is determined by the following equation:

Strikeouts minus Walks divided by Innings Pitched equals SWIP.

SWIP = (K – BB) / IP

Another way to look at this is to say that for each positive result, the recording of an OUT in the form of a strikeout, the pitcher receives a (+1). For each negative encounter, in the form of a BB, he receives a (-1). Simple enough right? I could have added in events such as HBP, but since WHIP leaves HBP out, as I mentioned above, I have chosen to do the same thing in this case. Here is an example of how you can figure out SWIP so you can see what I’m talking about.

EXAMPLE

John Lackey had 190 K and 72 BB in 217.2 IP in 2006.

(190-72) / 217.2
118 / 217.2
0.54 SWIP

John Lackey’ SWIP for the 2006 was therefore 0.54.

Though SWIP is recorded in the same manner as WHIP, the way to read the results is a bit different. Whereas the lower the WHIP the better one has performed, SWIP works in the opposite direction…the higher the SWIP the better.

Here is a rough estimate of what the results mean if you need a guide to help to put things in perspective.

.90 and UP: Excellent season, Hall of Fame worthy.
.70 to .89: An all-star performance, worthy of Cy Young Consideration.
.50 to .69: Borderline all-star to decent starting pitcher, a guy you’d like to have on your staff.
.35 to .50: A guy who’s hanging on to the 4th or 5th rotation spot.
.20 to .34: His major league days are numbered.
Below .20: Toledo Mudhens here I come!

Before going any further here, let me briefly detail the performance of every hurler who tossed a
pitch in the 2006 season. During the 2006 season, major league pitchers put up the following numbers:

31,655 Strikeouts
15,847 Walks
43,258 IP

So in order to find out the major league average for SWIP in the 2006 season, we simply plug the numbers into our simple equation.

SWIP = (K – BB) / IP
(31,655-15,847) / 43, 258
15,808 / 43258
0.365
SWIP = 0.37

Therefore, the 2006 ML average for SWIP was 0.37, a number which mirrors the major league SWIP totals of the past few years:

2005: 0.36 SWIP
2004: 0.36 SWIP
2003: 0.34 SWIP
2002: 0.35 SWIP
2001: 0.38 SWIP
2000: 0.30 SWIP