Whether you are sports analysts or just a casual baseball fan, and you want to track the performance of your favorite pitchers, feel free to use our WHIP calculator. Enter the number of walks, hits and innings in the calculator and our calculator will do the rest for you.

You are a crazy fan, and you want to explore more calculators that give you stats about baseball, besides WHIP calculator? Don’t forget to skim through and check out our Fielding Percentage (FPCT) Calculator. For athletics geeks and race predictions, check out our Race Predictor. However, if you are more of a math geek, check out our comprehensive list of plenty of useful math calculators, such as Segment Addition Postulate Calculator.

What Does WHIP Mean in Baseball?

If you wonder what’s WHIP in baseball, head over to the official MLB glossary. Then, look up the baseball whip definition, and you will see that WHIP is defined as one of the most common statistics that evaluate a pitcher’s performance.

What does WHIP stand for in baseball?

What Does WHIP Mean in Baseball?

WHIP, as a baseball stat, is an acronym used for walks and hits per inning pitched, and it measures how well a player is keeping runners off the basepaths.

Players with lower WHIP are considered better pitchers because they manage to prevent baserunners, which is their main goal.

Origin

WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) dates back to 1979, when Daniel Okrent, a writer who invented rotisserie league fantasy, and invented this baseball term (WHIP). Initially, its name was a bit different, and you could have found it as “innings pitched ratio”. However, over the years, the initial term evolved into WHIP.

WHIP Formula

If you are unsure how to calculate WHIP score of a player, there is a universal formula used for it:

\text{Walks and hits per inning pitched} = \frac{\text{hits + walks}}{\text{innings pitched}}

where,

hits – hit or a base hit occurs when the batter hits the ball into fair territory and reaches the first base without errors or fielder’s choice

walks – A walk (BB) is considered when a pitcher throws four pitches out of the strike zone, and the hitter swings none of them

MLB WHIP Leaders

Here is the list of active professional MLB players who have currently the best WHIP in baseball.

RankPlayer (age, yrs)Walks & Hits per Innings pitchedInnings pitchedThrows
1.Clayton Kershaw (33, 14)1.00422454.2L
2.Jacob deGrom (33, 8)1.01141261.2R
3.Chris Sale (32, 11)1.04231672.1L
4.Max Scherzer (36, 14)1.08372536.2R
5.Stephen Strasburg (32, 12)1.09261465.1R
6.Corey Kluber (35, 11)1.10001422.2R
7.Gerrit Cole (30, 9)1.11151449.1R
8.Madison Bumgarner (31, 13)1.12242034.0L
9.Justin Verlander (38, 16)1.13422988.0R
10.Kyle Hendricks (31, 8)1.14061228.1R
11.Yu Darvish (34, 9)1.15131293.1R
12.Aaron Nola (28, 7)1.15801023.1R
13.Zack Greinke (37, 18)1.15883110.0R
14.David Price (35, 13)1.1624 2103.1L
15.Carlos Carrasco (34, 12)1.20601296.0R
16.Johnny Cueto (35, 14) 1.20632034.1R
17.Adam Wainwright (39, 16)1.21022375.2R
18.Sonny Gray (31, 9)1.21991267.1R
19.Rich Hill (41, 17)1.22061134.2L
20.Julio Teheran (30, 11)1.22391396.1R
Top 20 best WHIP of active MLB players

Interesting fact: According to statistics, in 1907, George Winter made a record as a baseball player who had the lowest WHIP in a season – a score of 0.50.

WHIP Calculator – How to Calculate?

As mentioned earlier, WHIP can be calculated manually using the formula. However, we have built a simple tool (calculator) that automates the calculation based on particular parameters that you pass to it. 

Therefore, in this section, you will learn to utilize our WHIP Calculator and find “the walks and hits per inning pitched” of a player.

Step-by-step process using our calculator:

  • Enter the total number of hits (base hits) a player scored in the calculator.
  • Find and enter the number of walks (baseballs – BB) in the calculator.
  • Define the number for how many innings you are calculating WHIP in the calculator.
  • After you input all the required parameters in the calculator, the WHIP Calculator will return you the “walks plus hits per inning pitched” score for a player.

Walks Plus Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP) – Real-world Usage

What is the real-world usage of WHIP?

Calculating WHIP is never done just for the sake of number. Instead, analysts (statistics) use it to track the progress of pitchers and see their current performance. Moreover, comparing WHIP scores of players from different teams can give you an idea of which team has a higher percentage of winning.

Baseball fans use it to check if their favorite players perform well. In other sports like basketball, you can track the basketball player’s shooting score through true shooting percentage. In the same way, in baseball, a player’s performance and statistics can be measured with the help of a WHIP score.

WHIP Calculator – Example

If you are a pitcher or just a fan who would like to know how to calculate WHIP easily using our WHIP Calculator, then don’t skip this section. We will walk you through all the necessary steps you need to know beforehand in order to measure it properly with the help of our calculator.

Scenario: Suppose you want to find the WHIP score of a player with 300 hits, 60 walks over 250 innings pitched. Let’s make use of our calculator in the calculation.

Steps:

  1. Find the “hits” input parameter, and set it as 300 in the calculator
  2. For walks, input 60
  3. We defined inning pitched as 250, so enter the innings number in the parameter field
  4. The calculator returns the value: of 1.44 (walks and hits per inning pitched)

The WHIP Calculator displays the score of 1.44, which belongs to the group below the average pitchers. Therefore, the player has a lot to improve to become a better pitcher.

FAQ

What is the meaning of the WHIP acronym?

WHIP is an acronym used for walks and hits per inning pitched, and it measures how well a player is keeping runners off the basepaths.

How do you calculate WHIP in baseball?

You can calculate the WHIP of a pitcher with the following formula, or alternatively using our simple calculator:
Walks and hits per inning pitched = (hits + walks) / innings pitched

What is an average WHIP in MLB?

An average pitcher has a WHIP of 1.3 in MLB.

Should WHIP be high or low?

Generally, when you interpret the score in sports, the higher score you get, the better it is. However, for calculating WHIP of the pitchers, it is the opposite. Players with the best performance in the league have low WHIP, whereas the average and worse pitchers score higher.

Who has the best WHIP in baseball?

Addie Joss holds the best WHIP of all time with a score of 0.9678.

What is a good WHIP in baseball?

Generally, around or under 1.10 WHIP is considered a good (great) pitcher.