Decisions, Decisions: Pick the Pitcher

In modern baseball, the pitching stats I’m about to list would be unthinkable. The innings alone would look like typos, as if I’d combined the totals of two or even three pitchers. But they’re real, I promise, and all of them occurred in the same league, in the same season. It even happened in my lifetime.

How we view those numbers now, versus how they were viewed at the time, stands as a pretty clear indicator of why it’s a bit dangerous to compare numbers across eras, or apply modern thinking to historical performance.

First, let’s give you the basics of three pitchers who each had a remarkable season, all at the same time.

• Pitcher A: 336.0 innings, 280 strikeouts, 6 shutouts, 1.96 ERA, 154 ERA+, 2.53 FIP, 0.905 WHIP, 7.5 K/9IP, 4.4 K/BB

• Pitcher B: 273.0 innings, 202 strikeouts, 5 shutouts, 1.95 ERA, 150 ERA+, 2.76 FIP, 0.842 WHIP, 6.7 K/9IP, 3.7 K/BB

• Pitcher C: 258.1 innings, 264 strikeouts, 9 shutouts, 1.60 ERA, 186 ERA+, 2.04 FIP, 0.871 WHIP, 9.2 K/9IP, 3.6 K/BB

Whew. That’s a ton of innings, and those are microscopic ERA figures. And look at the shutouts. Combined, these three pitchers, all by themselves, threw as many shutouts in this one season as all American League pitchers threw in the 2022 and 2023 seasons combined.