Barry Zito and the Need for New Pitching Metrics

When it comes to approximating a successful pitching campaign in Major League Baseball, the traditional measurements are wins, losses, earned run average (ERA), walks-plus-hits per innings pitched (WHIP), strikeouts, and walks. 

Some stat geeks, and I use that term inclusively, will pour over minutiae like home runs allowed, batting average against, on-base percentage against, slugging percentage against, etc.

Nevertheless, the majority of fans stick to the basic alphabet soup: W, L, ERA, WHIP, K, BB, and HR.

Those are fantastic tools to thresh out the absolutely best of the bunch.  Guys like Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain from the San Francisco Giants jump to mind as two guys who shine in most (if not all) of those categories.

Cliff Lee dominated them ...

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