Team W/L for each starter
Posted by Andy on August 30, 2007
It's not hard to see which pitchers are the leaders are in wins, losses, and W-L% for any given period. I have gone ahead and calculated something a bit different: team wins and losses for all starts by each pitcher. So that basically takes all no-decisions for each starter and adds them to their win total if the team ending up winning the game, and adds them to their loss total if the team lost.
This stat is pretty easy to see for any individual player. For example, if you check out Bert Blyleven's gamelogs for 1979, you can see that while Blyleven himself earned a 12 and 5 record in 37 starts, the Pirates actually went 23-14 in Blyleven's starts.
I went ahead and got the totals for all starts by each pitcher since 1997, split based on whether the team won or lost. This is really easy to do. Go to the PI Pitching Game Finder, set team W (or team L) on the left, click the bubble for role of Starter, and then sort by Players with games in career. Doing this twice (once for wins and once for losses) generates two long lists. I put those lists into Excel, did alphabetical sorting, and eliminated players who didn't have at least one team win and one team loss. From there, I could calculate leaders by total and percentage. Click through for the details.
So, from 1997 through Tuesday, here are the leaders for team wins in a player's starts:
1 Greg Maddux 217 2 Tom Glavine 214 3 Randy Johnson 214 4 Jamie Moyer 204 5 Roger Clemens 200 6 Andy Pettitte 199 7 Mike Mussina 198 8 Curt Schilling 196 9 David Wells 192 10 Pedro Martinez 183 11 Tim Hudson 181 12 Kenny Rogers 180 13 Bartolo Colon 175 14 Woody Williams 174 15 Kevin Millwood 173 16 Livan Hernandez 166 17 Kirk Rueter 164 18 Brad Radke 163 19 Jason Schmidt 161 20 Jeff Suppan 161 21 Aaron Sele 160 22 Freddy Garcia 155 23 Esteban Loaiza 155 24 Mike Hampton 154 25 Javier Vazquez 154
The meaning of such a stat is up for debate. Obviously, these pitchers have absolutely no control over what happens in the game after they depart and are no longer the pitcher of record. But I do believe that it is possible that there are some psychological effects. I have heard a number of former players who are now broadcasters that profess that the strength of a team's offense depends not only on the quality of the opposing starting pitcher, but also on the perceived strength of the opposing pitcher in comparison to the perceived strength of a team's own starting pitcher. I've also heard discussions about a team's tendency to "relax" offensively when their own ace is pitching and they score a run or two, thinking it will be enough to win.
Do such effects truly exist? I don't know. But I do think it's interesting to look at these totals.
Here are the leaders for team losses:
1 Livan Hernandez 178 2 Steve Trachsel 170 3 Jeff Suppan 160 4 Javier Vazquez 160 5 Greg Maddux 151 6 Brad Radke 151 7 Tom Glavine 150 8 Jamie Moyer 142 9 Woody Williams 139 10 Jason Johnson 139 11 Mike Mussina 138 12 Jon Lieber 138 13 Jeff Weaver 138 14 Kevin Millwood 135 15 Kenny Rogers 129 16 Bartolo Colon 129 17 Jason Schmidt 129 18 Esteban Loaiza 129 19 Eric Milton 129 20 Sidney Ponson 129 21 Jamey Wright 129 22 Shawn Estes 128 23 Andy Pettitte 127 24 Tim Wakefield 127 25 Brett Tomko 127
Interesting to note that Pettitte and Wakefield both have 127 team losses, but Pettitte has 199 team wins versus Wakefield, who does not make the top 25 (he has 146 team wins.)
Now, here are the top 25 by team winning percentage, minimum 50 team wins plus losses.
1 Johan Santana 0.696 2 Chien-Ming Wang 0.676 3 Tim Hudson 0.658 4 Rich Harden 0.645 5 Randy Johnson 0.645 6 Mark Mulder 0.643 7 Pedro Martinez 0.640 8 Justin Verlander 0.638 9 Roy Oswalt 0.637 10 Curt Schilling 0.632 11 David Wells 0.630 12 John Smoltz 0.628 13 Roger Clemens 0.623 14 Andy Pettitte 0.610 15 Roy Halladay 0.606 16 Kevin Brown 0.603 17 Kirk Rueter 0.599 18 Orlando Hernandez 0.598 19 Ramon Martinez 0.597 20 Bret Saberhagen 0.597 21 Brian Tollberg 0.596 22 Freddy Garcia 0.592 23 Jaret Wright 0.591 24 David Cone 0.591 25 Barry Zito 0.590
Not a lot of surprises here, but it's nice to see some young guys like Harden and Verlander off to great starts. Just as with the actual W-L totals for the pitchers themselves, Santana and Wang are way out in the lead.
And finally, here are the bottom 25, also minimum 50 team wins plus losses:
1 Zack Greinke 0.308 2 Mac Suzuki 0.313 3 Ruben Quevedo 0.328 4 Nate Cornejo 0.339 5 Joe Kennedy 0.360 6 Bryan Rekar 0.361 7 Jason Johnson 0.365 8 Victor Santos 0.369 9 Jay Witasick 0.375 10 Chris Reitsma 0.377 11 Dennis Springer 0.380 12 Pete Schourek 0.385 13 Albie Lopez 0.388 14 Doug Waechter 0.389 15 Bob Tewksbury 0.392 16 Ryan Rupe 0.393 17 LaTroy Hawkins 0.395 18 Brandon Claussen 0.397 19 Chris Holt 0.402 20 Aaron Cook 0.402 21 Jose Rosado 0.406 22 Jimmy Anderson 0.406 23 Kip Wells 0.410 24 Chad Durbin 0.411 25 Jae Weong Seo 0.412
It's tough to see Zack Greinke's name up there knowing that he's had some off-the-field troubles. (Or I guess, technically, it's on-the-field if the reports are true that his depressing is due to social anxiety disorder than prevents him from practicing in front of teammates.)