Pitcher Metrics. The No WAR Zone.

JM3

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Might be better to split between average ERA for starters vs. average ERA for relievers.
I don't think so... an inning is an inning & the more really good innings you pitch for the team over the course of a season, the more useful of a player you are.

Grading starters on a curve doesn't make sense with the way I view pitching.
 

BaseballJones

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One game to save the world, give me Bob Gibson over Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson over Pedro Martinez. It still blows my mind that while so many big money FA deals end up fizzling, Johnson signed a big four year deal with ARI and proceeded to win the next four Cy Youngs.
Randy Johnson was indeed out of this world. So, so, so good. Here's his best 6-year stretch, compared with Pedro's best 6-year stretch

Johnson (1997-2002): 204 g, 120-42 (.741), 2.58 era, 2.63 fip, 177 era+, 1.07 whip, 12.3 k/9, 4 CYA, 5 top-5 CYA
Martinez (1997-2002): 172 g, 104-32 (.765), 2.20 era, 2.27 fip, 213 era+, 0.93 whip, 11.5 k/9, 3 CYA, 5 top-5 CYA

Amazing. (also amazing that both men's best 6-year stretches were simultaneous with one another)

As far as standard deviation goes, per our discussion earlier (these are for every regular season game they pitched from 1997-2002)...

Johnson: 3.58
Martinez: 3.09

So Pedro was more consistent than Johnson was over this six-year stretch.

Starts giving up:

- 0 ER:
- Johnson: 46 (22.5%)
- Martinez: 46 (26.7%)

- 1 ER:
- Johnson: 50 (24.5%)
- Martinez: 46 (26.7%)

- 2 ER:
- Johnson: 42 (20.6%)
- Martinez: 33 (19.2%)

- 3 ER:
- Johnson: 24 (11.8%)
- Martinez: 23 (13.4%)

- 4 ER:
- Johnson: 17 (8.3%)
- Martinez: 13 (7.6%)

- 5+ ER:
- Johnson: 25 (12.3%)
- Martinez: 11 (6.4%)

Good/Great (0-2 ER):
- Johnson: 138 (67.6%)
- Martinez: 125 (72.7%)

Decent (3 ER):
- Johnson: 24 (11.8%)
- Martinez: 23 (13.4%)

Bad/Terrible (4+ ER):
- Johnson: 42 (20.6%)
- Martinez: 24 (13.9%)
 

nvalvo

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Also striking: Martinez was somehow even better than Johnson's astonishingly high level on a rate basis during some of the toughest seasons in baseball history to pitch, but Johnson threw ~260 more innings in that span. That's like an additional season.

So while I am obviously a Martinez partisan given my rooting interests, it's not hard to make a case to prefer Johnson. Dude was really remarkable.
 

tims4wins

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Also striking: Martinez was somehow even better than Johnson's astonishingly high level on a rate basis during some of the toughest seasons in baseball history to pitch, but Johnson threw ~260 more innings in that span. That's like an additional season.

So while I am obviously a Martinez partisan given my rooting interests, it's not hard to make a case to prefer Johnson. Dude was really remarkable.
He was also great fun to watch. I loved watching him on the Mariners, Astros, and DBacks. It sucked when he got traded to the NYY because I was always a fan.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Johnson & Schilling on that 2001 Arizona team....

Regular Season
- Johnson: 249.2 ip, 21-6, 2.49 era, 1.01 whip, 13.4 k/7
- Schilling: 256.2 ip, 22-6, 2.98 era, 1.08 whip, 10.3 k/9

Post Season
- Johnson: 6 g, 41.1 ip, 5-1, 1.52 era, 0.80 whip, 10.2 k/9
- Schilling: 6 g, 48.1 ip, 4-0, 1.12 era, 0.64 whip, 10.4 k/9

I mean, that's just unbelievable.
 

tims4wins

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Johnson & Schilling on that 2001 Arizona team....

Regular Season
- Johnson: 249.2 ip, 21-6, 2.49 era, 1.01 whip, 13.4 k/7
- Schilling: 256.2 ip, 22-6, 2.98 era, 1.08 whip, 10.3 k/9

Post Season
- Johnson: 6 g, 41.1 ip, 5-1, 1.52 era, 0.80 whip, 10.2 k/9
- Schilling: 6 g, 48.1 ip, 4-0, 1.12 era, 0.64 whip, 10.4 k/9

I mean, that's just unbelievable.
90 IP is nuts.
 

jon abbey

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Johnson & Schilling on that 2001 Arizona team....

Regular Season
- Johnson: 249.2 ip, 21-6, 2.49 era, 1.01 whip, 13.4 k/7
- Schilling: 256.2 ip, 22-6, 2.98 era, 1.08 whip, 10.3 k/9

Post Season
- Johnson: 6 g, 41.1 ip, 5-1, 1.52 era, 0.80 whip, 10.2 k/9
- Schilling: 6 g, 48.1 ip, 4-0, 1.12 era, 0.64 whip, 10.4 k/9

I mean, that's just unbelievable.
They started five of the seven WS games, plus Johnson relieved in game 7 on 0 days rest! Best two man pitching combo in postseason history (sorry Sandy/Don), it's amazing that NY came two outs away from winning the series, they had won eleven postseason series in a row at that point and just would not die.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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They started five of the seven WS games, plus Johnson relieved in game 7 on 0 days rest! Best two man pitching combo in postseason history (sorry Sandy/Don), it's amazing that NY came two outs away from winning the series, they had won eleven postseason series in a row at that point and just would not die.
Though I'm always disgusted to do so, I have to give those Yankee teams credit. They weren't just super talented, they were like a vampire. You had to drive the stake through their hearts in order for them to be truly killed. They had grit upon grit.

I think that's what's been missing from these Yankee teams the past decade. Still tons of talent, but they've just been missing....something. Maybe this is it.

But Johnson and Schilling...holy crap were they good.
 

Archer1979

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Nolan Ryan never met a batter he didn't either strike out or walk. His walk numbers are what eventually led him to have less than a GOAT career.
... and It's the primary reason that the Mets felt he was expendable and traded him to the then California Angels. Seeing the tandem of Ryan and Frank Tanana on the schedule in the mid-70's was frightening. Just another reason to hate the Mets.

To me, the three key pitching metrics I look at (and so often cite) are: ERA, WHIP, and K/9.

ERA: Because that's a measure of earned runs a pitcher allows per nine innings. Unearned runs all count too, but presumably those aren't the pitcher's fault. Though I have to say, if the pitcher himself makes an error that allows runs to score, those runs are unearned, even though they ARE the pitcher's fault. So it's not perfect, but it does help us understand a key component of a pitcher's performance.

WHIP: Because this is them keeping runners off (or allowing runners ON) base. I think this is hugely helpful in understanding how good a pitcher is. The better a pitcher is, the fewer runners he'll allow on base, in general.

K/9: Strikeouts aren't the most important thing, and a pop out to the first baseman is just as good as a strikeout. But K/9 gives us a sense of how dominant a pitcher is over hitters. If you can't touch this pitcher, he's owning you. The more Ks, the more he's owning you.

Others have other ideas on what metrics matter most. For me, these are very easy to understand, they're given right there in baseball-reference.com so they're easy to look up, and they do tell key parts of the story of a pitcher's performance. For me anyway.
What's funny about this entire discussion is that this is the first I've ever heard about the Game Score stat (from the original thread). I tend to lose interest in a stat when there are multiple ways to derive it, but I'm going to give it a try to see if it blends with what the eyes see and what the numbers derive.

Like you, my go to stat is probably WHIP as it tends to lead more to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of a pitcher. As with all stats, its situational. For example, it isn't all the predictable, or comparable, when comparing the LOOGY role (RIP) to a starter. However, when using it to compare starting pitchers, it normalizes the comparison so its apples to apples. Now that the LOOGY (or one batter-relievers) are a thing of the past, it gives a better insight into the effectiveness of a reliever as it expands the sample size per outing.

One of the more useless and misleading stats is the Save. Too easy to manipulate (for example Dave Righetti in '86) and doesn't necessarily reflect the best reliever in a given game. When you boil it down, its really who was the pitcher for the last out of the game.
 

JM3

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I don't really have much use for WHIP. It's not nearly as predictive of future results as stats like xFIP & doesn't say nearly as much about what already happened as just basic ERA.

I guess if you were only allowed to look at one stat to try to quantify both how good a pitcher has been & how good they're going to be it would be a pretty good choice, buuuuut we don't have to do that.
 

Kliq

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The half-season Randy Johnson spent with Houston in 1998 after being traded by Seattle is absurd. 11 stars, 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA, 4 shut outs, 84 innings (averaged just under 8 complete innings per start) 116 Ks, ERA+ of 322.
 

tims4wins

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The half-season Randy Johnson spent with Houston in 1998 after being traded by Seattle is absurd. 11 stars, 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA, 4 shut outs, 84 innings (averaged just under 8 complete innings per start) 116 Ks, ERA+ of 322.
One of the best rentals ever, but they didn't advance past the NLDS IIRC
 

johnnyfromspain

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... and It's the primary reason that the Mets felt he was expendable and traded him to the then California Angels. Seeing the tandem of Ryan and Frank Tanana on the schedule in the mid-70's was frightening. Just another reason to hate the Mets.

This, and the fact that they had a rotation with Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Jon Matlack. When Nolan Ryan was traded from the Mets, he had lot’s of (fast) moving parts going every which way, and very little consistency, resulting in a great lack of control: lots of walks and many hits batsmen.
 
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Sandy Leon Trotsky

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Is there any way to compare Satchel Paige to these guys? From everything I've read about him, he likely was a top-five if not top-two greatest pitcher of all time.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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I know it is a small sample size but shouldn't K/9 be adjusted for those batters who strike out but still reach base on wild pitches or passed balls? Also, with the new rules, shouldn't balks be part of the measuring of pitchers? And how are walks and strikeouts that are called without a pitch being thrown handled?
Maybe. But I have no easy way of getting that data and baseball reference doesn’t make it easy to find that so I need to be able to go with a stat that is pretty easy to get to and look at.
 

Bergs

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One metric I have long said I wish we'd invent (and I'm not smart enough to do it) is to measure some sort of consistency. For example, even if the final ERA ends up the same for two pitchers, they can arrive at that place very differently. Imagine one guy is tremendously good and consistent but once in a great while he absolutely blows up (like 1.1 ip, 9 er kind of blowup). But other than those rare blowups, the guy is terrific. Then another guy is good sometimes, meh sometimes, lousy sometimes, and on the whole, is just kind of a meh pitcher. But his era ends up in the same place as the first guy. I'd rather have the first guy and take the mostly very good performances with the rare blowup over the second guy who is really just kind of meh.

We need a stat that measures THAT somehow.
Standard deviation of (earned runs per IP) measured per game indexed to league average does the trick.

For example, Pedro's 2000 games had a SD of R/IP of 0.22. Ryan's 1981 was 0.32. Ryan was 43% more volatile in 1981 than Petey was in 2000.

I do not have the time to come up with a "league average standard deviation of game-level earned runs per IP" that I like right now, but let's pretend in 2000 it was 0.75 just for shits and giggles (Which is probably too high). Indexed to that, Pedro's volatility index (indexed to 100 as league average) would be 30.
 
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Sin Duda

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Maybe. But I have no easy way of getting that data and baseball reference doesn’t make it easy to find that so I need to be able to go with a stat that is pretty easy to get to and look at.
No, adjustments for strikeouts with the runner reaching would be miniscule. It's not worth the trouble. The pitcher should be able to expect the catcher to catch a strike, even if it's way off the plate and batter swings and misses, because the catcher knows what pitch is coming (I'm not trying to blame the catcher for wild pitches, which are almost never swung at). And I think balks tend to be more umpire-specific than pitcher specific.
 

Max Power

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Is there any way to compare Satchel Paige to these guys? From everything I've read about him, he likely was a top-five if not top-two greatest pitcher of all time.
There's this.

MLB's long road to incorporating Negro League statistics | Sons of Sam Horn

But a bigger issue specific to Satch himself is that he made a lot more money barnstorming than playing for a regular team. He'd leave a team in the middle of a season to go off somewhere and pitch for a couple months. Or even take off in between starts and pitch a game or two. The stats that exist for him are even less than for most of his contemporaries.

The fact that he pitched well in MLB in his mid to late 40s, with who knows how many thousands of innings already on his arm, says he was probably inner circle Hall of Fame great when he was younger.
 

joe dokes

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The half-season Randy Johnson spent with Houston in 1998 after being traded by Seattle is absurd. 11 stars, 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA, 4 shut outs, 84 innings (averaged just under 8 complete innings per start) 116 Ks, ERA+ of 322.
Forgot that even happened.
As far as rentals go...I was always partial to Doyle Alexander with the Tigers in '87. 9-0; 11 starts; 88IP; 1.53 ERA; 3 shutouts. (279ERA+). But he only had 44Ks in those 88 innings.
Got him from the Braves for a 19yr old AA pitcher that was 4-10, 5.68.
Smoltz

But back to the thread....when I was 12 or so and started playing Strat-o-Matic (early 70s), a friend and I spent some time during a summer using an adjusted ERA for our "league" that tried to account for inherited runners. Pitcher leaves a guy on first and the reliever lets him in, it's .25 of the run to the first guy and .75 to the next guy. It *seemed* fairer. When we tried to account for the number of outs when the stranding occurred (because it soon became clear that not all strands are the same), it got too complicated for our simple minds and the rudimentary calculator/adding machine at our disposal.
 

Kliq

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Forgot that even happened.
As far as rentals go...I was always partial to Doyle Alexander with the Tigers in '87. 9-0; 11 starts; 88IP; 1.53 ERA; 3 shutouts. (279ERA+). But he only had 44Ks in those 88 innings.
Got him from the Braves for a 19yr old AA pitcher that was 4-10, 5.68.
Smoltz

But back to the thread....when I was 12 or so and started playing Strat-o-Matic (early 70s), a friend and I spent some time during a summer using an adjusted ERA for our "league" that tried to account for inherited runners. Pitcher leaves a guy on first and the reliever lets him in, it's .25 of the run to the first guy and .75 to the next guy. It *seemed* fairer. When we tried to account for the number of outs when the stranding occurred (because it soon became clear that not all strands are the same), it got too complicated for our simple minds and the rudimentary calculator/adding machine at our disposal.
Another memorable pitching rental was CC Sabathia going to Milwaukee in 2008. 11-2 in 17 starts, threw 7 CGs and 3 shutouts, 1.65 ERA, 255 ERA+, 128Ks in 130 innings. He even hit a respectable .230 despite spending his entire career up until that point in the AL. He pitched them right into the playoffs, but unfortunately got lit up in his own playoff start. Milwaukee gave up then-super-prospect Matt LaPorta to Cleveland, who ended up having a career WAR of -1.0, while Sabathia put up 5 WAR in just the half-season in Milwaukee.
 

jon abbey

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Another memorable pitching rental was CC Sabathia going to Milwaukee in 2008. 11-2 in 17 starts, threw 7 CGs and 3 shutouts, 1.65 ERA, 255 ERA+, 128Ks in 130 innings. He even hit a respectable .230 despite spending his entire career up until that point in the AL. He pitched them right into the playoffs, but unfortunately got lit up in his own playoff start.
He got lit up in large part because his final three regular season starts were all on 3 days rest to try to get MIL into the playoffs, including a 122 pitch complete game in game 162.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=sabatc.01&t=p&year=2008
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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He got lit up in large part because his final three regular season starts were all on 3 days rest to try to get MIL into the playoffs, including a 122 pitch complete game in game 162.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=sabatc.01&t=p&year=2008
Do players have any say in their usage if they're basically doing stuff like this? CC was a bit of rubber armed dude, but that shit could end a career. Obviously telling the manager/coaches that one refuses to pitch wouldn't look good heading into FA either but.... I dunno....
 

jon abbey

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Do players have any say in their usage if they're basically doing stuff like this? CC was a bit of rubber armed dude, but that shit could end a career. Obviously telling the manager/coaches that one refuses to pitch wouldn't look good heading into FA either but.... I dunno....
Yes, he was into it:

"Everyone was mad about that, what are the Brewers doing to you," Sabathia says. "I was doing it. That was me that was telling them I wanted to pitch on three days rest. I wasn't concerned at all. I just wanted to win, and I didn't want the season to end."

https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/08/02/cc-sabathia-brewers-trade-indians-2008
 

Kliq

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Sabathia then signed with the Yankees for a kajillion dollars right after he pitched himself into the ground, so it all worked out for him.
 

joe dokes

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Guys have vetoed pitching on 3 days rest though, I believe Verlander still has never done it.

Edit: Actually they tried it in the 2019 postseason and he got shelled:

https://www.12up.com/posts/astros-pitching-justin-verlander-on-3-days-rest-was-a-pretty-bad-idea-given-lack-of-history-01dppw0pwvq3
That's interesting. If you turn back the clock about 25 years, when the high-waisted Sansabelt crowd was still in control of HoF voting, even a rumor of a pitcher saying "no," would cost him votes from the tough guy voters.
 

JM3

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I know it is a small sample size but shouldn't K/9 be adjusted for those batters who strike out but still reach base on wild pitches or passed balls? Also, with the new rules, shouldn't balks be part of the measuring of pitchers? And how are walks and strikeouts that are called without a pitch being thrown handled?
1) Adjusting K/9 for wild pitches on strikeouts

I don't think it really impacts anything substantial that K/9 tells us (how often a player strikes out people per 9 IP), & it is already baked into ERA as that player scoring becomes an earned run, so not sure what impact an adjustment would have.

2) Adjusting K/9 for passed balls

This doesn't tell us much about the pitcher himself, and any resulting runs are unearned runs, so not sure the benefit of adjusting for this any more than adjusting for other errors in the field. If some players are more likely to allow unearned runs to a substantial level for whatever reason (harder to catch pitches, more hard hit grounders, etc.), maybe looking at RA instead of ERA is an adjustment stats people should make.

3) Balks to measure pitchers

Sure, the more you balk, the more likely you are to allow earned runs. Just like if you're easier to steal against or whatever else.

4) Strikeouts and walks without a pitch

Things like FIP take IBBs out of the formula so they aren't held against the pitcher. If we're talking pitch clock things, not really sure what the point of backing those out of stats would be, but they count just like any other ball or strike.
 

LogansDad

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Stemming off from talking about Pivetta, and looking a little deeper into the value of "being available" I am trying to work out a way to determine if being available really is a valuable skillset if you stink. I took all of the pitcher starts from 2022 and threw them in a table this afternoon and gave them points based off of their performance. I know we talked about Quality Starts above, and I kind of understand why people shy away from it, but I also kind of understand what it is getting at, too. In a league where teams generally average between 4 and 5 runs a game (yes, there are outliers), I think a pitcher who can go 6 innings and let up 3 runs is, at the least, giving his team a chance to win. Game score is fun and all, but I wanted to look at actual run results, because a 15K game that a pitcher lets up 5 runs could still be a decent game score.

I feel like 3 earned runs is a good baseline, and, since it is 2023, 5 innings pitched is a decent break even point as well, so what I did was award pitchers a single point for each inning they pitched beyond the 5th (with a bonus point for a complete game, or 9 innings+). They also received 1 point for each earned run less than 3 that they allowed, 0 points if they allowed 3 runs, and -1 point if they allowed 4 or more earned runs. I counted all games in which a pitcher allowed 4 runs or more in the same basket, because at some point you are just setting your team up to lose, and you shouldn't really be punished more. I also only spent like 10 minutes coming up with this, so it is something of a rough sketch of how I want to look at it. Oh, I also subtracted a third of a point for each unearned run they allowed. I know they don't get "charged" to the pitcher, but they do tend to hold at least some responsibility for it, unless the unearned run is a solo home run off of Jose Canseco's head.

I assigned the points value based on their IP in each start and their runs allowed. I also looked at total games with 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4+ runs allowed, and a percentage of games with 4+ runs allowed.

As someone who was strongly aboard the "Pivetta has value because he pitches 32+ games a year", I kind of put this together to specifically look at him. What I found was:

Justin Verlander and Sandy Alcantara were simply incredible last year.

Nick Pivetta, frankly, stinks. Even with his really great 6 week run, of 123 starters with 20 or more games started, he ranked 61st in total points achieved, which seems mediocre, but he also had 33 starts and since it is kind of a counting stat that makes it more bad, and when I switch to 25+ starts, he is 55th out of 85. Still pretty mediocre, but you can live with mediocre from your #5 starter.

Where issues begin to form, though, is that 38 of his 46 points of value came in that one stretch from May 1st until June 29th. Outside of that, he was simply awful. Overall, he had a 33% blowup percentage (more than 4 runs allowed), which was 99th out of 123, a nearly 10% rate of going less than 4 innings (67th out of 123) and only a 51% rate of going more than 5 innings (84th).

Basically, if you only have 5 (or less) available starting pitchers, sure you could do worse than Pivetta. But, really, you aren't going to find a way to make it that much worse.
 

JM3

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Without getting into any heavy arguments, I'll just say (not in any order)
1) there has been at least one batter this season who was called out on strikes without the final pitch being delivered
2) given that balks are being called more frequently than in the past, I'd prefer knowing ones who are above/below average
3) a problem with wild pitch/passed ball as the third strike is who to blame--catcher or pitcher

Given that there have been some major rule changes, I think they need to be looked into to see if stat computations need to be rethought. But that is my opinion.
Right. But what are you trying to accomplish or control for? There have been like 10k strikeouts in the majors this year. What would adjusting out a few that include an autostrike realistically accomplish? & you would have to reduce that reduction because some % of those would have ended up in strikeouts anyway.

I mean if you want balk stats, one can find them? Spencer Strider & Martin Perez currently lead the league with 2 & 13 other players are tied for 3rd with 1.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=0&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2023-01-01&enddate=2023-12-31&sort=23,d

The problem with wild pitch/passed ball calls is the same as hit/error calls. They are subjective. If there is something specific you are trying to control for, one could do it but I'm not sure what about the new statistic would be either better about quantifying what has already happened or predicting what is going to happen in the future.