Buck the Trends: WHIP and the future of the KC Royals

Welcome back to "Buck the Trends," a Kings of Kauffman series named in honor of late Kansas City legend Buck O’Neil. This series looks at current market trends and explores how the KC Royals could buck the trends by moving in an opposite direction. This edition of Buck the Trends takes a look at the statistic WHIP and how it's analysis is important to the future of KC Royals pitching.

In 1979, journalist Daniel Okrent invented the statistical measure innings pitched ratio. In the years since, the statistic has become known as WHIP, an acronym for Walks + Hits divided by Innings Pitched. In short, it is an accurate representation of the number of baserunners a pitcher allows. Baserunners are necessary to score runs and runs are necessary to producing wins so a pitcher who can limit baserunners is a valuable commodity. As the KC Royals look towards their future, WHIP should be at the forefront of their minds.

How should WHIP affect what pitchers the Royals look for?

A low WHIP is a statistic commonly associated with great pitchers. Jacob deGrom is the only active major league pitcher with a career WHIP under 1.00, but active pitchers with a low WHIP include Max Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, and Chris Sale. These are all household names among baseball fans. On the home front, former Royal Bret Saberhagen still ranks among the top 100 pitchers in career WHIP (1.1406) and Zach Greinke is 101 (1.171). Greinke is all but guaranteed to make it into Cooperstown. These are great local legends to keep in mind as the KC Royals consider the teams future.

The current KC Royals team has struggled with WHIP. The Royals finished 2023 with 106 losses. The team's WHIP (1.407) ranked 23rd. Baseball teams that allow base runners tend to lose baseball games. Teams ranking in the bottom ten in WHIP averaged 94.6 losses in 2023. All six 90 plus loss teams were among this group. This highlights the importance of the WHIP metric. It is not only an individual metric, but a team one as well. In order for the team to improve, they can't just replace one pitcher. There must be team wide statistical improvements made to lower this metric.

For the KC Royals, there's some postive developments. Dynamic newcomer Cole Ragans finished the season with the lowest WHIP among Royals starters (1.074). Due to being a midseason acquisition, Ragans only pitched 71.2 innings for Kansas City. Time will tell if his WHIP remains low, but this was a promising start for Ragans, and highlights where the Royals should turn to improve their pitching.

The second-best Kansas City WHIP was Jordan Lyles (1.244). Lyles pitched 177.2 innings in 2023, the most of any Royals pitcher since 2018. The correlation should be clear —   because WHIP is divided by the number of innings pitched, a starting pitcher can improve their WHIP simply by increasing their inning count. 

In order for the Royals to be more competitive, they must lower their team WHIP. This can most easily be achieved by increasing inning counts for pitchers. In order to bring inning counts up, major league teams must decrease the number of pitches thrown per batter.

How does WHIP factor into modern baseball?

The current trend in Major League Baseball is to lower WHIP by chasing strikeouts. Tampa Bay pitcher Tyler Glasnow, about whom Kings of Kauffman's Jacob Milham recently wrote, averaged 12.2 SO/9 in 2023; his WHIP was an outstanding 1.083. Current free agent and 2023 National League Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell also delivers strikeouts aplenty. Pitchers like Glasnow or Snell are terrific pitchers, but they also come with salaries that exceed the Royals typical acquisition profile. The Royals profile takes into account the fact that individual investments come with higher risk potential.

But Kansas City can justifiably pursue less expensive options. We know, for example, that Lyles can cover a large number of innings which can in turn have a positive impact on the team's WHIP. And remember former Royal James Shields? Over 2 seasons, Shields pitched 455.2 innings, accumulating a 1.2095 WHIP with a 3.18 ERA. Shields was paid just under $24 million for those two seasons.

A historical prototype pitcher of this style is Hall of Famer Jack Morris, who carried a career 3.90 ERA into Cooperstown. Morris was not a strikeout pitcher; his SO9 was only 5.8; and his ERA is currently the highest among Hall of Fame pitchers. But Morris didn't get into Cooperstown because of strikeouts or earned run average, he got in because he successfully gobbled up innings. From 1979-1994, Morris averaged 6.96 innings per game. Morris had a respectable career WHIP of 1.296 and pitched 175 complete games.

When evaluating players, teams like the Royals are generally looking at shorter time frames. In today's environment, it is rare for a pitcher to spend their career with one team. It's common for teams to target free agents or arbitration eligible pitchers for their roster. Most pitchers reach these marks around ages 28-30. When Morris was 28 years old, he pitched an other-worldly 293.2 innings in 37 games, finishing the 1983 season with a super-human 7.924 innings per game average and a 1.158 WHIP. As the KC Royals plan out their pitching future, it's good to keep 1983 Jack Morris on their minds. There are always surprise innings eating pitchers on the market that could go far to reducing team WHIP.