Why Teams Like High K Pitchers

I’m sure you’ve probably seen something like this before. A query selected all pitcher-seasons since 2016 in which a pitcher worked at least 15 innings. For each pitcher season, the query calculated the strikeouts per nine innings, rounded to the nearest integer (so 3.50 to 4.49 evaluates to 4). Finally, the query grouped all those pitcher-seasons by the rounded K per 9, and calculated ERA and innings pitched. Here is the data, from lowest K per 9 to highest.

Ks per 9 IP	Earned Run Average	Innings Pitched
3	3.95	330.7
4	5.06	1023.3
5	5.07	4439.3
6	4.74	10326.7
7	4.51	18192.0
8	4.23	21990.0
9	4.08	13757.7
10	3.63	12698.7
11	3.62	6372.7
12	2.98	3133.0
13	3.58	1060.3
14	2.64	885.0
15	2.58	324.7
16	2.33	240.0
17	1.42	19.0
18	1.32	27.3

It’s a nice demonstration that the higher the strikeout rate, the lower the ERA.

from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2KI8UxT