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Can someone please explain to me what the statisitic "WHIP" means in the game of baseball?

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2 Answers

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The definition of WHIP or Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched is the following per wikipedia:

 WHIP = (Walks + Hits)/(Innings Pitched)

Cautionary note: While Whip is a common statistic in fantasy baseball, its a rather poor tool for evaluating pitchers as it fails to account for something pitchers have little control over (BABIP)

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I agree it is a poor tool for evaluating in any given game. But over a season or 10+ games your better pitchers tend to have lower WHIP – Chad Mar 15 '12 at 13:23
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@Chad this is true. However I've seen BABIP be seriously skewed for entire seasons... – wax eagle Mar 15 '12 at 13:35
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you are much better off using FIP or xFIP to evaluate pitchers even over the course of a season. It attempts to account for the randomness that exists due to BABIP (and with xFIP home runs). – wax eagle Mar 15 '12 at 13:43
For a team, league, or pitcher? – Chad Mar 15 '12 at 13:45
WHIP is just another stat. you could have a WHIP < 1 and an ERA > 7 if all you give up are home runs. WHIP ERA and IP are the 3 stats that mean the most to me. K's are a great stat but if they do not come with a low WHIP ERA And IP then they dont mean anything. – Chad Mar 15 '12 at 13:49
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up vote 6 down vote

In addition to the popular answer above, it's also useful to note that WHIP was originally conceived of as a statistic used to score pitchers in fantasy baseball.

So while WHIP is not widely used in sabremetrics communities to help rank the usefulness of pitchers, it is a useful statistic to understand in fantasy circles as well as use as an indicator of future ERA performance. Ex: Lower WHIP generally coincides with lower ERA. Since ERA is such an established stat (for legitimate reasons or not), WHIP can be used as a tool to forecast future performance of a pitcher's ERA.

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