The Impact of Innings Pitched
In the last edition of Outside the Box, I said we would perform a similar type of study as last week, except Innings Pitched would be the varying number, not ERA. What will this allow us to see? The difference between a 200-Inning starter and a 75-Inning reliever, both with the same ERA, how many more wins the starter contributes than the reliever. Exactly the same as last week, let's begin with that pretty ERA formula:
Now let's begin with the complimentary example. Our two pitchers have a flat 3.00 ERA. Pitcher A has thrown 200 Innings and Pitcher B has 75. If you plug in the numbers; 3.00 ERA, 200 IP, then Pitcher A has allowed 67 Runs and Pitcher B has allowed 25 Runs.
Obviously these are pitchers and giving up runs is a negative thing, but in this case it tells us the magnitude of difference between them. The difference between 67 Runs and 25 is 42. Remember in last week's article I said 10-11 Runs is equal to about 1 Win. So if we take our 42 Run Difference, divide it by 10.5, we get our grand difference of exactly 4 Wins! A pitcher who pitches 200 Innings with a 3.00 ERA contributes 4 more Wins to his team than a pitcher with the same ERA in 75 Innings. Seems about right, doesn't it?
Let's check out the results from some different Inning Differences:
This table reads as follows --- for two pitchers with the same ERA, in the instance when one pitcher has thrown 100 more Innings than the other, the pitcher who has thrown more innings will have contributed approximately 3.1 more Wins than the other.
As exemplified by the table, for every 31.25 Innings of work completed, 1 more Win is contributed to the team. Divide 150 by 4.8 or 125 by 4 and you will figure out how I arrived at that ratio.
Okay that will wrap it up for this week's addition. See you next week.
Now let's begin with the complimentary example. Our two pitchers have a flat 3.00 ERA. Pitcher A has thrown 200 Innings and Pitcher B has 75. If you plug in the numbers; 3.00 ERA, 200 IP, then Pitcher A has allowed 67 Runs and Pitcher B has allowed 25 Runs.Obviously these are pitchers and giving up runs is a negative thing, but in this case it tells us the magnitude of difference between them. The difference between 67 Runs and 25 is 42. Remember in last week's article I said 10-11 Runs is equal to about 1 Win. So if we take our 42 Run Difference, divide it by 10.5, we get our grand difference of exactly 4 Wins! A pitcher who pitches 200 Innings with a 3.00 ERA contributes 4 more Wins to his team than a pitcher with the same ERA in 75 Innings. Seems about right, doesn't it?
Let's check out the results from some different Inning Differences:
This table reads as follows --- for two pitchers with the same ERA, in the instance when one pitcher has thrown 100 more Innings than the other, the pitcher who has thrown more innings will have contributed approximately 3.1 more Wins than the other.
As exemplified by the table, for every 31.25 Innings of work completed, 1 more Win is contributed to the team. Divide 150 by 4.8 or 125 by 4 and you will figure out how I arrived at that ratio.
Okay that will wrap it up for this week's addition. See you next week.
