Hernandez, Kluber Head List of AL Run Prevention Leaders.

Indians starter Corey Kluber had a great year by any measure in 2014
(Photo credit: RotoScouting.com)

With the off-season awards season getting under way soon, it's a good time to present the sabermetric pitching Leaders.   

There is no surefire way to determine the best pitchers in the league, but a pitcher's job is to prevent runs.  So, it's useful to estimate how many runs pitchers saved their teams compared to an average pitcher.  In the past, I have explored four different ways to do this:    

• Pitching Runs -  Runs Saved Above Average based on innings and runs allowed. 

• Adjusted Pitching Runs - Pitching Runs minus estimated Runs allowed by fielders. 

• Base Runs -  Runs Saved Above Average based on batters faced and hits, walks, total bases and home runs allowed.

• FIP Runs - Runs Saved Above Average based on innings, bases on balls, hit batsmen and home runs allowed and strikeouts.

These measures are discussed in more detail in an earlier post.  After computing them, you can aggregate them using weights depending on which measures you trust the most. I chose to take a simple average.

The 2014 American League leaders are listed in Table 1 below.  Mariners ace right hander Felix Hernandez led the league in Pitching Runs (40), Base Runs (46) was second in FIP Runs (39) and third in Adjusted Pitching Runs (36).  That gave him an average of 40 runs prevented compared to an average pitcher.  

Indians right hander Corey Kluber finished first in the categories which Hernandez did not, specifically Adjusted Pitching Runs (38) and FIP Runs (45).  His average of 37 was second best in the league.

The leading Tiger was Max Scherzer with an average of 24, good for sixth in the league.  He finished fourth in Adjusted Pitching Runs (27), but only 14th in Pitching Runs (15).  Other Tigers in the top 20 were David Price (20 runs prevented for Detroit and Tampa Bay combined) and Rick Porcello (8 runs prevented).  Anibal Sanchez had 12 runs prevented but is not listed since he missed the 150 innings limit.  Justin Verlander was a disappointing -8 worse than league average, but would do better if you put more weight on FIP Runs (+11).    

Table 1: AL 2014 Run Prevention Leaders

Pitcher	Team	IP	Pitching Runs	Adjusted Pitching Runs	Base Runs	FIP Runs	Average
Felix Hernandez	SEA	236	40	36	46	39	40
Corey Kluber	CLE	235.2	36	38	27	45	37
Chris Sale*	CHW	174	32	38	31	32	33
Garrett Richards	LAA	168.2	26	23	35	26	28
Jon Lester*	***	219.2	25	26	23	33	27
Max Scherzer	DET	220.1	21	27	15	33	24
Dallas Keuchel*	HOU	200	21	24	19	21	21
David Price*	***	247.4	14	14	19	35	20
Collin McHugh	HOU	154.2	18	20	23	18	20
Alex Cobb	TBR	166.1	20	18	21	14	18
Phil Hughes	MIN	209.2	8	13	14	35	17
Sonny Gray	OAK	219	17	12	24	14	17
Jose Quintana*	CHW	200.1	5	12	14	32	16
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	179	12	9	17	16	13
Yordano Ventura	KCR	183	14	14	7	12	12
James Shields	KCR	227	9	9	7	15	10
Drew Smyly*	***	152.3	13	16	4	6	10
Scott Kazmir*	OAK	190.1	6	2	16	14	10
Chris Tillman	BAL	207.1	12	13	8	5	10
Chris Archer	TBR	194.2	4	2	15	12	8
Hiroki Kuroda	NYY	199	0	6	12	14	8
Rick Porcello	DET	204.2	5	11	4	12	8
Mark Buehrle*	TOR	202	10	14	-5	13	8

Data source: Baseball-Reference.com