MLB

The Top 20 Pitching Seasons in the Last 25 Years

Brett Oswalt  —  @bRo14thekid Mar 31st, 2017
In recent years, Clayton Kershaw has been dominant. But are any of his single-season performances worthy?

From year-to-year and era-to-era, comparing pitching seasons isn't exactly an easy task. Since there are a lot of variables in play, pitchers can look more dominant than they actually were.

That's where advanced analytics come in.

Many advanced baseball metrics give us the ability to sift through the years and find the pitching gems. Wins above replacement (WAR) is probably the best tool for doing just that.

In case you're unfamiliar, WAR is a single number that summarizes a player's total contributions to their team. It is all-inclusive and really represents a player's worth.

Different websites calculate their own version of WAR, but we're going to use FanGraphs' version here. In a nutshell, FanGraphs takes into account Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) as well as ballpark and innings. For more on that, you can go here.

Based on FanGraphs' values, there have been 21 pitchers with a season-long WAR of 8.0 or better since 1992. Who are they and who leads the way?

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