What Is WHIP in Baseball? Good WHIP Explained

WHIP in baseball means walks and hits per inning pitched. You take the walks and hits a pitcher has allowed, add them together, and divide by their innings pitched. The number tells you how many baserunners that pitcher gives up in an average inning, so a lower WHIP is better.

It is one of the easiest pitching stats to read once you know the scale. A WHIP around 1.00 means one baserunner per inning, which is excellent. Below is the exact formula, what counts as good, and how WHIP stacks up against ERA.

The WHIP formula

The math is simple: WHIP = (walks + hits) ÷ innings pitched.

Say a pitcher throws 200 innings and allows 160 hits and 40 walks. That is 200 baserunners over 200 innings, for a WHIP of exactly 1.00. If another pitcher throws the same 200 innings but gives up 180 hits and 60 walks, that is 240 baserunners and a WHIP of 1.20.

The stat only counts hits and walks, per the MLB glossary. It ignores hit batters and anyone who reaches on an error, which is worth remembering when you compare two pitchers with similar numbers.

What is a good WHIP in baseball?

League-average WHIP usually lands near 1.30. From there the tiers are well understood by analysts, and this scale is the quick reference to keep in mind.

WHIP	Rating
Below 1.00	Elite, Cy Young territory
1.00 to 1.10	Excellent, ace level
1.11 to 1.25	Very good
1.26 to 1.32	Roughly league average
1.33 to 1.50	Below average
Above 1.50	Poor

So a starter running a 1.10 WHIP is pitching like a genuine number-one. Cross below 1.00 and you are in award-contending company. A 1.40 tells you the pitcher is putting too many runners on, which tends to catch up with them over a full season regardless of how the ERA looks in the short term.

The record holders

The all-time career leader is Addie Joss at 0.9678, a number from the dead-ball era that no modern pitcher has approached over a full career. For a single season, Pedro Martinez set the modern record with a 0.7373 WHIP in 2000, allowing just 128 hits and 32 walks across 217 innings. That season is often cited as the finest pitching year of the live-ball era.

Those figures put the scale in perspective. When an elite modern ace finishes a season around 0.90, they are near the best the sport has produced, and Martinez’s 0.7373 sits in a tier of its own.

WHIP vs ERA: which is better?

Neither replaces the other, because they answer different questions. ERA measures the runs a pitcher gives up per nine innings; WHIP measures the baserunners they allow per inning. A pitcher can post a low ERA while running a mediocre WHIP by stranding runners, and that kind of gap often signals the ERA will rise as the luck evens out.

The smart move is to read them together. WHIP shows how much traffic a pitcher allows, and ERA shows how much of that traffic scored. For the full breakdown of the run-based side, see our explainer on what ERA means in baseball. And for the same one-number logic applied to hitters, read what OPS means in baseball.

The short version: WHIP is walks plus hits divided by innings pitched, 1.00 is elite and 1.30 is average, and it is the baserunner counterpart to ERA rather than a rival to it.