I’ve often wondered why ERA is figured based on 1 game (9 or 7 or whatever innings) versus 1 inning. I could understand if it were a stat that, taken to 3 decimal places, didn’t give very much information…like a stat that always came out like .001, .002, or even .0004 which would be rounded down to .000. But ERA is fine…3.75 per 9 innings comes out as .417 per inning…what’s wrong with that? Just like batting average, on base, slugging, etc. Games of different lengths aren’t combined in any sense, it’s just an average….all your ER divided by all your innings times 9.
