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WHIP was created purely to give pitchers another stat to get points from for fantasy leagues. It really isn’t an indicator of anything. The main idea is that a lower WHIP means that a player walks people less and gives up fewer hits, and is a per inning basis.

Allowing baserunners on free passes is generally a bad idea, so we already have stats that measure walk rate. Whether you choose to use BB/9 or BB% (walks / total batters faced), you have the idea already. Even if you wanted to parse that down to a per inning basis, you’d still have it.

We also already have hit rate stats. Again, whether you prefer H/9 or H% is your perrogative. There are two fatal flaws with even considering hit rate as an indicator of pitching talent: defense and luck. Defenses vary wildly, especially in the minor leagues, and balls in play turned into hits in the minors may not be with a superior defense. There is also little to no correlating evidence that pitchers can control whether a ball hit by the batter will be a hit or not. Generally, we just prefer if the batter doesn’t hit the ball at all (swinging strikes / strikeouts = good). So, WHIP, which combines walks AND hits into a singular stat, already has one theoretically flawed pitching talent evaluator included.

WHIP also doesn’t differentiate between a pitcher who gives up a ton of hits or a ton of walks. Thus, your Carlos Silvas would get lumped right in there with your Rich Hills, even though they’re two entirely different pitchers. Which is worse, in your eyes? A pitcher who gives up a lot of hits or a pitcher who offers a bunch of free passes? Determination of a pitcher’s skill set and talents rests upon using these stats individually, not combining them into a singular baserunner stat like WHIP.

What you should be using instead are the controllable factors of a pitcher. Walks, strikeouts, ball in play types, etc. Context is also important. A pitcher posting good numbers and a low ERA at High Desert, for example, may be a superior pitcher or he may not. Eliminate the noise and go with the skill sets and judge from there.

Scouting, honestly, is the best way to go for minor league prospects. Minor league stat analysis is always going to have the potential for outside factors screwing up the data.

Hits given up are not an indicator of pitching talent one way or the other. To assume the pitcher has control over the ball once a hitter makes contact is a judgment that isn’t supported by empirical data. What we do know is that the pitcher has the ability to determine (most of the time) what kind of ball in play it is: ground ball, fly ball, or line drive. Beyond that? Not much.

A lot of folks believe that a pitcher can induce weak contact or strong contact and while it may look like they can because it happens (ball off the end of the bat, busted off the thin part of the bat, pop up, etc) if a pitcher really could control that then there would be pitchers who could never be hit. Ever. Why would you ever throw a pitch that could be hit if you could control it not being hit?

Hits are the result of the batter’s skill, the defense playing behind the pitcher, and luck (bloops, ground balls with “eyes”, high bouncing choppers, etc). The pitcher can determine whether the batter puts it on the ground or in the air or on a line, but after that, it’s to the Baseball Gods (and the spectrum of probabilities) to decide.

So, yeah, hits against the pitcher. Ignore that. Stick to what the pitcher CAN control. Walks, strikeouts, batted ball data, etc.

You could find lots of great pitchers and pitching prospects who went through 30 IP stretches that were that bad.