Josh Beckett & Phil Hughes – Out Of The Gate
Posted by Steve Lombardi on August 27, 2007
I was just playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Streak finder to see how some 21-year olds, or younger, started their big league pitching careers, when I noticed how close Josh Beckett and Phil Hughes were on the list that I had generated. Here's a summary of their stats over their first seven games in the big leagues:
At first blush, with the exception of some errors made behind them, and perhaps some runners left on that came in to score (after they left a game), the numbers are pretty darn close, huh?
Even the number of pitches thrown and those for strikes are within a tick of each other.
Josh Beckett had a great game in his 8th career start. Maybe Phil Hughes can do the same?
August 27th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Hughes has a remarkably high ERA for an OPS against of just .680.
I just did a Pitching Season Finder for the last 10 years, starters qualifeid for the ERA title, ranked by lowest OPS against:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/shareit/dGGH
An OPS against of .680 would put Hughes at about the 150th best season in the last 10 years (meaning that only about 15 pitcher per year do better.) Of all the guys ahead of him, only Matt Clement in 2003 had an ERA above 4.00. Most of the ERAs were in the low 3's or 2's, like Beckett's.
Nice find, Steve.