ERA by Wind Speed

Below are data visualizations that present how a Major League Baseball player's Earned Runs Average (ERA) is impacted by the Wind.

ERA is a statistic in baseball that represents how many runs a baseball player is giving up on average per 9 innings. In baseball, runs are used to determine the winner of each game. The team that scores more runs wins. For this reason, a better pitcher has a lower ERA, as they are allowing the opposite team to score fewer runs. ERA is therefore a measurement of how good a pitcher is. The lower the ERA, the better.

We'll look at how Max Scherzer a pitcher currently on the New York Mets, was impacted by the wind in the 2021 season.

When the wind speed is lower, Scherzer seemed to have a lower ERA. The bar chart indicates that when the wind was less than 3 miles per hour, Scherzer's ERA was an impressive 0.80.

It's also evident that as the wind speed is increasing, so is Scherzer's ERA. His ERA in games where the wind speed is 3-6 miles per hour is 2.91, and that ERA jumps even higher to 3.60 in games with a wind speed between 7-9 miles per hour.

Now let's look at how another pitcher on the Cincinnati Reds, Luis Castillo, was impacted by the wind in 2021.

Some trends are immediately noticeable from this data visualization. The first is that Castillo's ERA was significantly high when the wind was high. His ERA in games when the wind speed was between 10 and 13 miles per hour was 6.375. In games when the wind speed was greater than 13 miles per hour, his ERA skyrockets to 7.20 which indicates that he performed worse during the highest wind speeds in 2021.

Assessing the lower wind speeds yields better results for Castillo. When the wind speed was less than 3 miles per hour, his ERA was 1.80. When the speed was between 7-9 miles per hour, his ERA was 2.480. Note that Castillo's ERA when the wind speed was 3-6 miles per hour was 5.00. This introduces some variation in the data, however it is evident that his performance only seems to get worse as the wind gets stronger.