MLB: The 25 most valuable pitchers of 2019

Here are the 25 starting pitchers who produced the most on-field value in the 2019 MLB season, based on the number of innings pitched, ERA+ and strikeouts.

In MLB, we’re pretty much obsessed with the concept of value. We apply a plethora of often exotic statistical approaches to measure it: batting average, slugging, home runs, WAR, OPS+, Defensive Runs Saved, Weighted Runs Created…the list goes on.

The one factor we generally overlook in all these assessments is the most meaningfully value-oriented of all of them: salary. What, precisely, was the player paid – relative to all other players tasked with doing what he was doing – and how much of that pay did he “earn?”

The rating system that follows corrects that oversight. Based on 2019 performance, it measures which players were the most “valuable” as judged by their on-field production relative to their salary. And let it be noted here that we are limiting our focus to on-field value only. Some players, megastars, are paid based largely on factors unrelated to on-field performance, their drawing power at the gate, their celebrity, their endorsement/promotional potential being among them. Those factors, while acknowledged as real, are not part of this discussion.

Today we’re looking at starting pitchers, a group defined by meeting either of two criteria. The first is workload: pitchers are included if they worked at least 150 innings and made at least 20 starts. The second criteria is salary: Even if they failed to meet the first criteria, pitchers are included if they were paid at least $10 million to be a starting pitcher.

In 2019, those criteria encompass 89 pitchers with an average salary of $10.5 million. Starters are rated based on three weighted performances, those being innings pitched (40 percent), strikeouts (20 percent), and ERA+ (40 percent).

Here are the averages for those three criteria: 164.51 innings, 162.66 strikeouts, and a 114.258 ERA+.