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Winningest and Losingest Players

Posted by Raphy on October 1, 2009

Tom, a reader, asks the following question:

"How can I search the database to find out which player in MLB history has WON the most games (that is, the player actually appeared in the game as pitcher, batter, DH, pinch runner, etc) when his team won that game), and conversely, which player in MLB history has LOST the most number of games."

While PI doesn't have the ability to search for this information for all of MLB history, we can use it to search since 1954. To do this use the "Batting Gamelog Finder", select Team: "Win" and search for "players w/ games in career". This yields the following results:

                   Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
 Pete Rose          1972 Ind. Games                
 Hank Aaron         1735 Ind. Games                
 Carl Yastrzemski   1718 Ind. Games                
 Brooks Robinson    1636 Ind. Games                
 Barry Bonds        1606 Ind. Games                
 Eddie Murray       1601 Ind. Games                
 Rickey Henderson   1585 Ind. Games                
 Reggie Jackson     1579 Ind. Games                
 Willie Mays        1536 Ind. Games                

 

Doing the search for losses give us this list:

                   Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
 Rusty Staub        1633 Ind. Games                
 Carl Yastrzemski   1589 Ind. Games                
 Pete Rose          1583 Ind. Games                
 Hank Aaron         1555 Ind. Games                
 Cal Ripken         1497 Ind. Games                
 Rickey Henderson   1496 Ind. Games                
 Dave Winfield      1478 Ind. Games                
 Harold Baines      1437 Ind. Games                
 Eddie Murray       1424 Ind. Games                
 Rafael Palmeiro    1423 Ind. Games             

One Response to “Winningest and Losingest Players”

  1. DoubleDiamond Says:

    I've read before that Pete Rose has the record for being on the winning team for the most games, so someone has already done this research. But maybe not as quickly as a modern database can do it. I don't know, however, if this only includes games in which he appeared or also includes games for which he was an active player but didn't get in the game. In his career, though, there weren't that many of those games.