How is pitcher "effectiveness" best measured?

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Sep 30, 2013
415
0
There’s a thread on another board about pitching “effectiveness” and what stat shows it best. I said many years ago I thought it was pretty simple and was the relationship between the runs a pitcher gave up and the batters he got out. In essence, ERA. But as time’s gone by, my thoughts have changed. Now I lean much more toward measuring the number of bases and/or runs per pitch, since number of pitches has taken on so much more meaning than when I 1st started thinking about it.

This is a pretty simply metric that shows it.

View attachment pitall2hista.pdf

Any thoughts?
 

marriard

Not lost - just no idea where I am
Oct 2, 2011
4,312
113
Florida
Any thoughts?

Because of the wide range of abilities and playing levels we run into in travel, we have found the best measure of our pitchers has been ERA against similar level teams we are competitive with (i.e. teams that are somewhat close to our level of play).

So we throw out all pitching (and other) stats against significantly weaker teams. We also throw out all stats against teams that we are completely over matched by. It takes away all the outliers such as the 15-0 win over the young, inexperienced team and the 0-15 loss against the trophy hunting playing down team and leaves us with information about who we really are against similar competition.

Works for us anyway.
 
Sep 30, 2013
415
0
I like to look at the ERA, WHIP and strikeout to walk ratio.

I’ll grant you that those are metrics that measure performance ok, but I’m not talking performance. All you’re measuring with those 3 metrics is earned run rate, rate of walks and hits to innings pitched, and strike out rate compared to walks. IMHO, until effectiveness is defined, it can’t be measured. I define it as making it the most difficult for the other team to score or get on base because runs are the currency of the game.
 
Jun 18, 2012
3,183
48
Utah
Yeah, stats are pretty much the wherewithal, but I first look at a pitcher's mental toughness. There is nothing worse with pitchers than being weak mentally. I would argue that mental toughness, together with the mechanics and experience, is what gets you the impressive ERA.

The pitchers I currently have lack either in mental toughness or in their desire to work hard to get the experience, or both.
 

Greenmonsters

Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
Feb 21, 2009
6,168
38
New England
Because of the wide range of abilities and playing levels we run into in travel, we have found the best measure of our pitchers has been ERA against similar level teams we are competitive with (i.e. teams that are somewhat close to our level of play).

So we throw out all pitching (and other) stats against significantly weaker teams. We also throw out all stats against teams that we are completely over matched by. It takes away all the outliers such as the 15-0 win over the young, inexperienced team and the 0-15 loss against the trophy hunting playing down team and leaves us with information about who we really are against similar competition.

Works for us anyway.

Excluding the "outliers", this approach is probably more valid than considering stats from all the games. However, a potential problem with this approach as well as Scorekeeper's is it can't consider that in HS games and TB tournaments (and even college games) a team's pitching rotation often gets set based on matching up the team's best pitcher against the "best" scheduled (or the "best" anticipated opponent in a bracket scenario). This would mean that pitchers #2 and 3 might consistently be seeing weaker opponents than the #1 (I know of a D3 team w/ a #3 pitcher who's stats looked All-Conf like until you saw that she pitched all the Cupcake U games) Also, particularly in TB with multiple games/day, the strength of the defense may vary significantly on a game to game basis which can have a noted impact on the pitcher's stats.
 
Nov 29, 2009
2,975
83
I think the two stats that can define a pitcher's effectiveness the best are K's/7 and ERA. If you have a pitcher who average's 7+ K's a game and has a low ERA, it shows they are keeping the hitters off balance while taking care of 1/3 of the outs in the game. That makes defense's job that much easier.
 
Aug 29, 2011
2,581
83
NorCal
Have you looked at stats like FIP, xFIP, SIERA in the sabermetric baseball community and tried to relate them to softball?
 
Dec 12, 2012
1,668
0
On the bucket
I think the two stats that can define a pitcher's effectiveness the best are K's/7 and ERA. If you have a pitcher who average's 7+ K's a game and has a low ERA, it shows they are keeping the hitters off balance while taking care of 1/3 of the outs in the game. That makes defense's job that much easier.

I disagree here. K's are good since they result in an out, but effectiveness isn't always measured in strikeouts. Some pitchers aren't K pitchers, but instead generate a lot of weak ground balls and infield pop ups. An out is an out and can come in less than three pitches. You can't do a K in less than three pitches. I'll take a three pitch ground/pop out innings any day.

I like WHIP, but it isn't perfect either. As mentioned before, you somehow need to factor in the level of competition or the numbers aren't apples to apples.
 
Last edited:
Dec 7, 2011
2,368
38
What annoys the crud out of me is the sooooo many TB coaches that will solely judge a pitcher on their exacting ability to hit a spot. In this world they create pitchers like Dallas Escobedo (or my DD) would never exist....

I am a WHIP fan too. Until the much older/higher classifications of SB I would always take the K pitcher over the weak-ground-ball pitchers as errors are too prevalent.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,481
Members
21,445
Latest member
Bmac81802
Top