The statistic shows how well a pitcher has kept runners off the base paths, one of his main goals.
The formula is simple enough — it’s the sum of a pitcher’s walks and hits, divided by his total innings pitched.
That makes this statistic vert simple. This stat should be used to measure exactly as it says but don’t try to make it into any other thing to measure a pitcher.
WHIP Chart
Excellent 1.00 and under
Great 1.10
Above Average 1.20
Average 1.30
Below Average 1.40
Poor 1.50
Awful 1.60 and higher
more Baseball Spotlight sabermetrics and analytics
WHIP into History
Looking into the past we find some interesting numbers when looking at Walks Hits per Innings Pitched
Mariano Rivera finished with a 1.00. Pedro Martinez had a 1.054. Christy Mathewson had a 1.058. Reliever Trevor Hoffman was a 1.066 and old timers Walter Johnson at 1.061 and Mordecai (Three Fingers Brown)at 1.066 WHIP.
One thing about WHIP is it has an inability to differentiate between types of hits. If you want to know that follow the pitchers opponents OBP. WHIP is best in evaluating relievers. As that is the crux of their job. Keeping runners off base.
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup. Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
