Exclusive Value Add Ratings for All 227 Pitchers in Final Week of Season

The 4500th pitching start was entered in the database Sunday, as 227 pitchers have now made the five starters necessary needed to make the list. With the final playoff spots up for grabs in the seasons final week, the following is an alphabetical list of all pitchers so that readers can compare match-ups. There is also one adjustment to the system for Innings Pitched in a game in which the pitcher is given no chance to win.

The 4,500 games entered into the database through Sunday (and found at www.valueaddbaseball.com shortly) break into three categories that are explained in links off the sites.

1. In 661 of the games (15%) the starting pitcher did not give himself a chance to earn a victory because he did not last five innings, so he gets a negative rating of at least -0.6 for the game.

2. In 2,947 of the games (65%+) the team gave the pitcher some chance to win the game – at least a 1.00 ERA Needed to win and in some cases much higher – though the highest total we list is a 36.00 ERA Needed to win. In those cases, as explained on links from the site, the pitcher is credited based on how likely it is that a replacement pitcher would have been able to win the game. Items 1 and 2 equal the “Value Raw” on the database which tells you how many wins a pitcher has truly been worth to his team.

3. The one change in the formula impacts only the adjustment to the Raw Value for the 892 (20%) games in which the pitcher went at least five innings but was given no chance to win (a 0.00 or worse ERA Needed to win, such as when Chris Sale was given six runs of support but had his bullpen given up six in the ninth inning this weekend to cost him the victory). One fair criticism of the formula as originally presented was that it did not measure the impact of a pitcher getting in more innings to save his bullpen even when the team did not give him a chance to win. In the original formula, every pitcher who was given no chance to win but went at least five innings was given an adjustment of 0.2. After running the numbers on the 892 starts in question, it was determined that the average starter who gets a 0.00 ERA Needed to win pitches 6.18 innings. Instead of being given a blanked 0.2 for these games, the pitcher is now given an adjustment equal to his innings pitched MINUS five MULTIPLIED BY 0.2. These numbers still match up so that on balance pitchers will average the same value in games in which they are given no chance to win as when they are given a chance to win.

The following is the alphabetical list of the rankings for all 227 players for whom we have at least five starts entered into our database.

  table.tableizer-table { border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif font-size: 12px; } .tableizer-table td { padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc; } .tableizer-table th { background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; }