Earned Runs Records and Details
What is Earned Runs ?
An earned run is run scored by the opposing team that is considered to be a direct result of the pitchers actions. For example a home run would be counted as an earned run since the pitcher would be directly responsible for the hit whereas a player scoring because of a position player's defensive error, or had advanced bases because of a position player's defenisve error allowing them to score later is not an earned run Generally, for Earned Runs, lower is better. (Source)
What is a good Earned Runs?
What does good Earned Runs mean? "Good" baseball stats can be very subjective and mean different things to different people.
I have attempted to quantify good and bad by taking season and career stats for MLB pitchers with a minimum number
of pitched outs. In this case 100 for career and 50 for a season. To find good and bad within this cohort of players I calculated the first and third quartiles,
anything between these quartiles I consider average. This makes up the middle 50% of players. In an example
where higher is better for a stat, below the first quartile (bottom 25% of players) would be bad and above the 3rd
quartile (top 25% of players) would be good. For stats where lower is better, flip around good and bad.
Career, Season, and Season Average Earned Runs Records
For my hot take on Earned Runs records most of the same rules apply from the first section. To be considered for my
prestigious lists the player must meet a certain threshold of pitched outs. Since this is a Pitching stat to be considered
for the career list the player must have over 100 pitched outs, for a season consideration the player must have
had 75 pitched outs. Additionally, the player's final game must have been after 1899.