The numberFire baseball staff will be posting a weekly feature called Burning Questions. The idea is simple: we pose a general question to the numberFire baseball staff, getting contributors to provide an answer and an explanation on the particular subject.

This gives you, the reader, a chance to hear opinions from many different experts, who, believe it or not, don't always agree on everything. What we do have in common is a knowledge of and love for the game, and we want you to be a part of the conversation. Feel free to pose an answer to this or a future Burning Question on Twitter, or tell us why you agree or disagree with one or more of our answers. These features are designed to start the conversation, not to offer a comprehensive solution, and often there is not a clear correct answer.

And now, our answers to this week's burning question: What is your favorite baseball statistic?

Average Fastball Velocity

this jam and also is a pretty useful statistic for evaluating baseball players.

I’ll say it now, WAR is not a perfect statistic and there are disagreements on the best way to calculate it. But the advantages are tremendous. WAR is a statistic that considers every contribution (or lack thereof) on a baseball field by any given player over any given timeframe on a scale easy to understand and use for other calculations, such as proper price tags for free agents. Instead of evaluating hitters by AVG/HR/RBI and pitchers by W-L/ERA/K, WAR gives us a more thorough evaluation by considering and properly weighting each category relative to its effect on winning baseball games.

Moving beyond this, WAR is useful in comparing players of different positions and/or among different ERAs. Was FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. Averaging these versions is typically seen as the most effective way to quantify WAR, though letting a version stand alone is still quite useful.

World Series interview aside, this statistic has many uses and is quite effective in its place.

WHIP

Ladd Davies' thoughts:

The first statistic most people pay attention to when looking at a pitcher’s stat line is ERA. Why not? It gives you the average runs a given pitcher allows for every nine innings pitched. Though at first glance it can seem like a decent indication of a pitcher’s success, it can be quite misleading.

A pitcher may have a pretty ERA that sits below 3.00, but getting there could be quite nerve-racking. As a Red Sox fan, I know this all too well. Watching Daisuke Matsuzaka in Boston was quite the exercise in patience. He had a talent for getting two runners on with no outs, and would somehow get a strikeout and a lucky double play. No damage done. But this would eventually come back to bite him by way of a five-run inning.

On the other hand, middle relievers can have a huge earned run averages because of one bad inning, and they'll have a tough time lowering it due to their limited innings on the mound.

This kind of inconsistency can be very frustrating for fantasy baseball owners especially - there had to be a way to indicate this with some numbers. Baseball is all about numbers, right?

A greater barometer for pitching consistency exists, and it’s called WHIP. One of fantasy baseball’s pioneers, Dan Okrent, invented WHIP in 1979 with the idea to create a stat that shows the number of runners a pitcher allows on base each inning he pitches. He did this by adding the total number of walks and hits then dividing by total innings pitched. As a result, we can get a much better idea of pitching consistency without as much luck being involved.

Max Scherzer was the only starting pitcher to average below a single runner allowed per inning (.097) last year, for instance, and he now has a Cy Young award to show for it. Coincidence? Of course not - it's the power of WHIP.