Affirmative defense. An affirmative defense to a civil lawsuit or criminal charge is a fact or set of facts other than those alleged by the plaintiff or prosecutor which, if proven by the defendant, defeats or mitigates the legal consequences of the defendant's otherwise unlawful conduct.
Quick Answer. In baseball, the acronym WHIP stands for walks plus hits per inning pitched and is a way of measuring the efficacy of a pitcher. WHIP essentially measures the number of base runners allowed by each pitcher and is used in sabermetric player analysis. Continue Reading.
The lower the number, the more effective the pitcher. Okrent originated WHIP when he invented fantasy baseball in 1979, and it is a measure still used today by many fantasy leagues to evaluate pitchers. Per Baseball Reference, the AL WHIP in 2015 was 1.290, while the NL WHIP was 1.299.