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Die Hard McClain

Posted by Steve Lombardi on May 22, 2009

Which big league pitcher, since 1954, has the longest streak of pitching at least 7 innings in a game from the start of his career?  According to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Streak Finder, here's the answer:

                   StreakStart  Streak End Games   W   L   GS  CG SHO  GF  SV   IP     H    R   ER   BB   SO   HR   ERA  HBP  WP  BK Teams
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Joe McClain        1961-04-14  1961-06-01     9    5   3   9   3   1   0   0   72     59   23   21   13   21   3   2.63   2   1   0 WSA
 Steve Rogers       1973-07-18  1973-08-18     7    4   2   7   4   2   0   0   59.2   36    8    8   19   27   3   1.21   0   0   0 MON
 Tom Browning       1984-09-09  1985-04-21     6    3   0   6   1   0   0   0   47.1   41    6    5    8   28   0   0.95   0   1   0 CIN
 Steve Gromek       1954-04-13  1954-05-14     6    5   1   6   5   1   0   0   54     47   14   14    5   25   5   2.33   2   1   0 DET
 Curt Simmons       1954-04-14  1954-05-12     6    4   2   6   6   1   0   0   54     46   14    9   21   28   1   1.50   0   0   0 PHI

Amazing.  If not for this game, the streak would have been 14 games for McClain.   For more on Joe, click here.

Related posts:

    16 TB, The Somewhat Hard Way
    Longest Streak to Start Career with Multiple Hits – Baseball-Reference PI
    Big Apple Debut – The Hard Way
    It’s Really Hard To Score A Run When You Strikeout
    Bloops: Why A Curveball Is Hard To Hit

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Streak Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Die Hard McClain”

  1. Holtzman Was A Horse For Yanks, At First… Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    [...] off from the Stat of the Day, I was curious as to which pitcher started off his “Yankees career” with the longest [...]

  2. David in Toledo Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    Remember that the database starts in 1954, no matter how many years someone might have pitched prior to 1954. Those aren't the start of Gromek's (1948 Doby photo)and Simmons's (1950 Whiz Kids) careers.

  3. JDV Says:
    May 26th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    If the list did not count relief appearances made before a pitcher's debut as a starter, Fernando Valenzuela worked at least 7 innings in each of his first 10 ML starts (1981). Further, he pitched 9 innings in each of his first 8 starts, including 7 complete games -- one went extra innings -- and an amazing 5 shutouts. He had made 10 relief appearances late in 1980 (0.00 ERA) before earning the Opening Day start in '81.

  4. Raphy Says:
    May 26th, 2009 at 3:59 pm

    JDV if you don't count relief appearances Mark Fidrych wins. He made 2 relief appearances before his first start. He then ran off 13 consecutive 7+ IP starts.
    http://www.bb-ref.com/play-index/shareit/zSzj

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