Bleacher Bums Forum

Jeff Samardzija and Joe Kelly both finish with a 1.35 WHIP on the season.

Kelly: 10-5, 2.69 ERA, 5.8 K's / 9

Samardzija: 8-13, 4.34 ERA, 9 K's / 9

Was that intended to make us feel Smardz is actually better than his record and ERA indicate, or to point out the inferiority of ERA as a stat for judging pitchers?

The entire NL this year had an ERA of 3.74, and a WHIP of 1.282.  Smardz was a bit worse than that on both stats, meaning that in his case his ERA was probably pretty accurately reflecting the fact that he simply was not very good in 2013.  http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2013-standard-pitching.shtml

He was 37th in ERA of only 44 NL pitchers who qualified for enough innings to win the ERA title, and 36th in WHIP among the same 44 pitchers.

Chris, I didn't think my post either credited or maligned anyone.

Another factor could be that one pitches on a team that is substantially better defensively and offensively than the other one.

I think Dave was serious.