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 Hall of Famers we leave out

★ already in Cooperstown NeL Negro Leagues pitcher

Click on a row for information about that player.

Rank▲	SAA▲	Pitcher▲	NeL▲	IP▲	Seasons▲	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.