The True Hall of Fame — pitchers, part two of two

Top 150 Pitchers by Stat Above Average

The mound version of the hitters list. No borrowed run values, no replacement level: every pitcher is scored only against the actual league average and spread of their own season, on five things straight off the back of a baseball card — ERA, WHIP, strikeout rate, winning percentage, and saves. The list is shorter than the hitters' — a pitching staff is a handful of arms next to eight everyday bats, and Cooperstown's own ratio runs about two hitters to every pitcher.

1,319qualifying pool

150shown here

1,000+career IP minimum

71 / 150also in Cooperstown

This is a living ranking, not a set of plaques. It's rebuilt from scratch every year on the latest data, so a pitcher climbs on when his case passes the 150th and a borderline name drops off when someone else's rises past him. Active arms are in — no five-year wait. This is the 2025 edition; the twenty just outside the cut are listed at the bottom.

What's a Stat Above Average? Each pitcher-season is compared only to that season's own league average and spread — a 1913 season is judged against 1913, a 2024 season against 2024. The five stats are each converted to a z-score, then blended with the weights from this site's SAA — 25% ERA, 25% WHIP, 20% strikeout rate, 20% winning percentage, 10% saves — into one number for the season. (ERA and WHIP are flipped, so a lower-than-league mark is a positive z.) Those season numbers are then summed across every qualifying season, each scaled to a 200-inning workload, so a long steady career and a short dominant one can both add up to a genuine case.

The five aren't weighted equally. Like the hitters list — which leans on batting average and power — this one follows the SAA formula: ERA and WHIP carry half the score between them because preventing runs and baserunners is the job. Strikeout rate is the one bat-missing skill on every stat sheet. Winning percentage and saves round it out at the lowest weights.

Winning percentage and saves both lean on the team around the pitcher — run support, the bullpen behind him, whether his manager used him to close. They're in the score because they're in the SAA formula, but they do the least work: where this list and Cooperstown disagree, it's usually because a pitcher's ERA and WHIP say something his win total doesn't. The HOF column marks pitchers already voted into Cooperstown.

Negro Leagues pitchers are in the pool and scored the same way — Satchel Paige, Bullet Rogan, and Willie Foster all land inside the top 50. The NeL flag beside a rank marks a pitcher whose score draws on Negro Leagues seasons — a 40-plus-inning season in a Negro Major League, which is why Don Newcombe carries it. Unlike the hitters list, there's no shortened-schedule carve-out yet, so an arm whose surviving record falls short of 1,000 innings (Smokey Joe Williams, Bill Foster) is left out for now.

Hall of Famers only

★ already in Cooperstown NeL Negro Leagues pitcher

Rank▲	NeL▲	Pitcher▲	IP▲	Seasons▲	SAA▲	ERA z▲	WHIP z▲	K/9 z▲	WIN% z▲	SV z▲	HOF▲

Where the list and your gut disagree

Two it leaves out

Tom Glavine and Mark Buehrle both have Hall-of-Fame win totals and 3,000-plus innings, and the list leaves out both — Glavine 215th, Buehrle 750th. The score is built almost entirely from rate stats, and it rewards missing bats. Neither of them did.

#215 Tom Glavine Starter · 1987–2008 · ATL

305–203 · 3.54 ERA · 1.31 WHIP · 122 ERA+ · 74.0 bWAR

ERA+0.51

WHIP+0.24

K/9-0.53

WIN%+0.61

SV-0.38

Two Cy Youngs and 305 wins, but the profile is "good, never overpowering" — a below-average strikeout rate and a WHIP barely above the line. Winning percentage is his best category and it's the softest input in the formula. Twenty-two seasons of it, and the per-inning edge is still thin: 215th.

#750 Mark Buehrle Starter · 2000–2015 · CHW

214–160 · 3.81 ERA · 1.28 WHIP · 118 ERA+ · 60.0 bWAR

ERA+0.21

WHIP+0.24

K/9-0.94

WIN%+0.45

SV-0.35

The platonic innings-eater — 200-plus innings a year for over a decade, a perfect game and a no-hitter. But a strikeout rate a full standard deviation below his era, and ERA and WHIP only a hair better than league. Durability the score barely credits; bat-missing it prizes. It nets out just below average: 750th.

The contrast is Don Sutton, 28th — 324 wins across 23 years, never a Cy Young, never an ERA title, "just" two decades of reliably better-than-average innings that add up. A rate-based score rewards that shape when the volume is there and the rates stay above the line — and drops you fast when they don't, which is where Glavine and Buehrle land.

Recalculated every year

On the bubble

The twenty just outside the cut, ranks 151–170. A healthy season from an active arm, or the next weighting pass, and the line moves.