Yesterday was Opening Day in the Major Leagues. It should be a national holiday! In my post yesterday, I unveiled a new statistic for showing hitting performance, TOP. It combines the ability to get on base, the ability to hit for power, and the ability to steal bases.
Today, I’m going to use the same statistic for pitching. Fortunately, Baseball Reference provides a batting against stat when you look at pitching. What is this? It shows the statistics for pitchers using the normal batting stats such as hits, doubles, triples, homeruns, walks, strikeouts, stolen bases, caught stealing, etc. With this, you can see the batting average, on base percentage, slugging average each pitcher allowed. So it also works for TOP!
However, ranking pitchers with TOP works a little differently. In batting, there is a minimum number of plate appearances required to qualify for the batting title. That number is 502. We can’t go by this for pitching, since the majority of pitchers are relief pitchers. So I’m breaking down the pitching rankings into 3 separate categories: between 100 and 300 batters faced, between 301 and 500 batters faced, and then greater than 500 batters faced.
Top Ten Pitchers by TOP (100 - 300 batters faced)
| Rank | Player | TOP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emmanuel Clase | .239 |
| 2 | Danny Coulombe | .299 |
| 3 | Rafael Iglesias | .301 |
| 4 | Edwin Uceta | .310 |
| 5 | Porter Hodge | .311 |
| 6 | Kirby Yates | .314 |
| 7 | Jose A. Ferrer | .318 |
| 8 | Matt Strahm | .325 |
| 9 | Joe Jimenez | .329 |
| 10 | Hunter Gaddis | .331 |
Top Ten Pitchers by TOP (301 - 500 batters faced)
| Rank | Player | TOP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tyler Horton | .330 |
| 2 | Ryan Walker | .349 |
| 3 | Blake Snell | .366 |
| 4 | Bryan Woo | .367 |
| 5 | Justin Martinez | .378 |
| 6 | Keegan Akin | .386 |
| 7 | Shane Baz | .386 |
| 8 | Luke Weaver | .388 |
| 9 | Ryan Yarbrough | .401 |
| 10 | Jose Soriano | .403 |
Top Ten Pitchers by TOP (>500 batters faced)
| Rank | Player | TOP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tarik Skubal | .350 |
| 2 | Paul Skenes | .356 |
| 3 | Chris Sale | .376 |
| 4 | Zack Wheeler | .384 |
| 5 | Bryce Miller | .386 |
| 6 | Max Fried | .390 |
| 7 | Tanner Houck | .391 |
| 8 | Framber Valdez | .391 |
| 9 | Dylan Cease | .392 |
| 10 | Seth Lugo | .396 |
So the Cy Young Award winners are #1 and #3 in my rankings for Innings > 500. Not too bad.
Team Pitching TOP Rankings for 2024:
| Rank | Team | TOP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Detroit Tigers | .429 |
| 2 | Seattle Mariners | .431 |
| 3 | Atlanta Braves | .440 |
| 4 | Kansas City Royals | .441 |
| 5 | San Diego Padres | .450 |
| 6 | Chicago Cubs | .453 |
| 7 | Milwaukee Brewers | .455 |
| 8 | Tampa Bay Rays | .455 |
| 9 | Baltimore Orioles | .456 |
| 10 | Houston Astros | .457 |
| 11 | Boston Red Sox | .458 |
| 12 | New York Mets | .458 |
| 13 | Philadelphia Phillies | .459 |
| 14 | Minnesota Twins | .461 |
| 15 | Cleveland Guardians | .462 |
| 16 | Los Angeles Dodgers | .464 |
| 17 | New York Yankees | .464 |
| 18 | San Francisco Giants | .465 |
| 19 | Washington Nationals | .470 |
| 20 | St. Louis Cardinals | .471 |
| 21 | Cincinnati Reds | .473 |
| 22 | Pittsburgh Pirates | .478 |
| 23 | Toronto Blue Jays | .478 |
| 24 | Oakland Athletics | .479 |
| 25 | Texas Rangers | .479 |
| 26 | Los Angeles Angels | .489 |
| 27 | Arizona Diamondbacks | .493 |
| 28 | Miami Marlins | .499 |
| 29 | Chicago White Sox | .501 |
| 30 | Colorado Rockies | .534 |