Johnny Cueto Leads National League in Run Prevention

Reds Starter Johnny Cueto has been best in the NL in run prevention in 2014.
(Photo credit: Sports.Yahoo.com)

To follow up on my post on run prevention in the American League, I will now present the National League leaders.  There is no surefire way to determine the best pitchers in the league, but a pitcher's job is to prevent runs.  So, it's useful to estimate how many runs pitchers saved their teams compared to an average pitcher.  In the past, I have explored four different ways to do this:    

• Pitching Runs -  Runs Saved Above Average based on innings and runs allowed. 

• Adjusted Pitching Runs - Pitching Runs minus estimated Runs allowed by fielders. 

• Base Runs -  Runs Saved Above Average based on batters faced and hits, walks, total bases and home runs allowed.

• FIP Runs - Runs Saved Above Average based on innings, bases on balls, hit batsmen and home runs allowed and strikeouts.

These statistics are discussed in greater detail in the previous post.  The National League aggregate leaders headed by Johnny Cueto are shown in Table 1 below 

Table 1: NL Run Prevention Leaders as of May 5, 2014

Pitcher	Team	IP	Pitching Runs	Adjusted Pitching Runs	Base Runs	FIP Runs	Average
Johnny Cueto	CIN	55.0	16	15	12	5	12
Jose Fernandez	MIA	46.2	7	7	10	12	9
Adam Wainwright	STL	50.0	10	8	9	7	9
Jeff Samardzija	CHC	50.0	10	11	6	5	8
Tim Hudson	SFG	45.2	8	6	9	5	7
Jon Niese*	NYM	39.2	9	8	6	2	6
Julio Teheran	ATL	50.0	9	6	8	0	6
Jason Hammel	CHC	40.2	7	7	6	1	5
Jordan Lyles	COL	44.2	5	6	5	5	5
Gio Gonzalez*	WSN	43.1	5	6	4	6	5
Ervin Santana	ATL	33.2	6	4	3	6	5
Alfredo Simon	CIN	40.2	8	6	6	-1	5
Andrew Cashner	SDP	46.1	5	3	6	4	4
Nathan Eovaldi	MIA	45.1	3	3	5	7	4
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	43.2	7	6	3	2	4
Dillon Gee	NYM	46.2	7	6	5	-1	4
Tom Koehler	MIA	37.1	6	6	4	-2	4
Michael Wacha	STL	42.1	5	2	3	5	4
A.J. Burnett	PHI	43.2	5	6	3	2	4

Data Source: Baseball-Reference.com