kwERA_Minus

This past Friday Glenn DuPaul wrote a terrific article here at Beyond The Boxscore about the kwERA leaders and losers for 2012. For whatever reason, kwERA has been left on the bench by the major sabermetric stat-suppliers-- Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus, and Baseball-Reference. But let's not allow that to prevent us from appreciating this wonderful, simple little descriptive stat with enormous predictive capabilities.

To help continue to raise awareness of kwERA, I've put together an era-adjusted, league-adjusted, park-adjusted version of the stat, one we can call "kwERA-" or "kwERA minus". I've attempted to use the exact formula Glenn used, which is as follows:

C + (12* ((K- NIBB+HBP)/(BFP-IBB)))

I then compared each pitcher-season with the league-average and added strikeout and walk component Park Factors from Fangraph's GUTS section.

In order to get a good first impression of a statistic conceptually, I always like to see how the stat has fared in recent seasons. So, let's begin with a top twenty-five kwERA- seasons of the 2000's:

kwERA- Leaders 2000-2012

The top few seasons are all certainly close enough to stir up a little controversy. With each adjustment made, for park and league, a new winner was crowned, until finally Schilling's 2002 season stood at a statistical tie with Pedro's 2001 at 43 kwERA-. Both Pedro's 35.5/5.6 and Schilling's 31/3 strikeout and walk percentages have a superhuman feel to them, and it would be difficult to anoint one over the other. There is the small matter of Schilling having logged over 100 additional innings in his season, however. But not to worry, Pedro fans, our arbitrary line in the sand at the year 2000 has left Pedro with some additional ammo in future tables.

After the trio of Schilling, Pedro, and Johnson have finished monopolizing the top ten, we are reminded of some lesser-known elite seasons at #11 and 12 with Ben Sheets' 2004 and 2006 campaigns. And although it may seem nearly impossible to forget Mark Prior's fantastic season from 2003, some of us have spent long hours trying to do just that.

We are also reminded that Johann Santana once terrified batters with pin-point command, as did Eric Bedard as recently as 2007. Javy Vasquez had that strange season in 2009 with Atlanta while Zack Greinke was winning his Cy Young Award. And Francisco Liriano looked like a godsend for Twins fans in his rookie season in 2006. Brandon Beachy represents the most recent entry from 2011, just edging out Strasburg and his league-leading kwERA from 2012.

And if you haven't already noticed, I left the minimum IP for this table at 100, and as a consequence we pick up on some bulkier reliever seasons, including Octavio Dotel's 2001. The reason for this is two-fold, really. One, it is the same minimum Glenn used in his tables and I strive for uniformity. And two, it finally allows us to dethrone Pedro Martinez from a 'best of all-time' list of any kind. I imagine a handful of readers saw this article's headline and immediately thought, "TLDR, Pedro Martinez." But the Christmas joke's on you pal-- feast your eyes on Bruce Sutter, 1977, Greatest kwERA season of all-time:

kwERA- Leaders 1920-2012*

That both Doc Gooden and Sandy Koufax make an appearance feels appropriate, and there's certainly no shortage of our usual cast of characters with Schilling, Johnson, and Pedro all over the place. Yet, there are still a number of surprises. Duane Ward in '91 and Mark Davis in '85 especially surprised me. People often forget about Dick Radatz and his brief but monstrous period of domination in Boston, highlighted here with his 1962 and 1963 seasons.

But it wouldn't be Christmas eve if we didn't at least glance at some of the worst kwERA- seasons in both recent history and all-time. Let's first take a look at the biggest losers from this century:

kwERA- Losers 2000-2011

Now this group is pretty horrendous, but thankfully, not a single one of them was horrendous enough to qualify for the top ten worst of the live-ball era:

kwERA- Losers 1920-2011*

I've also put together a google doc detailing all the league constants I used for these tables, so that you can both check my work or play along at home.

*NOTE: Both 'live-ball era' tables are not park-adjusted due to the limited download-ability of the data. I expect to add the component Park Factors at some point in the near future.

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