11 Responses to “Complete game losses”

1. Devon Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 11:46 am

   Now that's impressive. More proof win totals are overrated.

2. Raphy Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am

   We can also try to combine innings and earned runs.
   Here are the pitchers (since '54) with the most losses in starts in which their ERA was less than 3.
   http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/xs399
   Here Perry is back at #1, Carlton at #2 and Blyleven at #13.

3. DavidRF Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm

   Its a myth that Blyleven pitched for below average teams. He's got two rings. What's his team WPct? Both eras of Twins teams could score runs... the reason why they didn't win more was usually pitching. The Pirates would have won more too if it weren't for strong Phillies teams. From what I've seen of closer analysis of Blyleven's game logs was that he had a very odd distribution of Runs Against. More "Shutouts and Shellings" and fewer "average games" than the usual pitcher. Maybe his curveball had more bite some days than others? Anyhow, there's been advances in the play index and retrosheet since I last checked so it would be fun to see how his advanced metrics compare against his contemporaries season-by-season.

   Still an easy HOF-er of course and should have been inducted a long time ago.

4. Andy Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   I did calculate Blyleven's team's winning % a while back. I forget the exact numbers but I think they were a little below average (not much.) However, I think there were certain years (1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, and others) where he pitched extremely well and it didn't come through in his record due to lack of run support.

   For example, in 1973 he led the league with a 158 ERA+. He LED THE LEAGUE. But he won only 3 more games than he lost. This gets forgotten because he won 20 while losing 17. The guy had 9 shutouts that year and still won only 20 games. Think if a guy threw 9 shutouts these days...

   1977 with TExas he had a 151 ERA+ and led the league with a 1.065 WHIP. But the record was just 14-12.

   His neutralized pitching stats have him at 23-11 in 1973 and 15-9 in 1977. I think the real this with Blyleven is not so much that he deserved more wins as it is that he deserved fewer losses. His overall neutralized pitching record is 285-237, as compared to his actual record of 287-250. That's probably just about right. Applying his neutralized W-L% of .546 to his actual number of total decisions (537) gives him a record of 293-244. If he had that record, he probably would have hung on to get 300 wins, maybe going 8-12 in a final season. Then he'd be a HOFer. Just think...one extra 8-12 season makes a guy a HOFer? Nonsense.

5. DavidRF Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 5:11 pm

   Oh, I'm a huge Blyleven & Twins fan. Just playing a little bit of devils advocate to make sure Blyleven truly earns his "most deserving for induction" label (which I think he still has). The 1973 Twins were 4th in the AL in scoring. The 1977 Rangers won 94 games and were sixth in scoring (a quarter run above average). Even the 1974 Twins were slightly above average in scoring. You'd figure a 142 ERA+ pitcher would do better than .500 with an average offense behind him. Blyleven's an odd duck in that throughout the early to mid-70s he made a habit of underperforming his ERA+-implied WPct every year. He certainly is still HOF-worthy but something else was also going on. I'd look more closely, but I'm on vacation.

6. nicolax24 Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 5:56 pm

   There are actually a decent amount of yankees on that first list. I guess they could have been on other teams when they pitched the complete game losses. That is an amazing stat for Nolan Ryan to have 75 losses when allowing 2 runs or fewer! Those were some crummy teams he was playing for.

7. JohnnyTwisto Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 pm

   DavidRF, I'm pretty sure that Blyleven received less run-support over his career than simply looking at his team's overall scoring would imply. However, it also seems that he did performed worse with the run support he did get than would be expected by a pitcher of his caliber. If you break it down on a start-by-start basis, there does seem to be some truth to the old claim that he "pitched just well enough to lose." Unfortunately I don't know of a good link to support that claim; it's mostly based on various posts I've seen by Mike Emeigh at BTF over the years.

8. SpastikMooss Says:
   November 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm

   Wow, I would not have figured that Maddux would have been on that list. I guess 13 of the games were with decent Cubs teams, but the 47 losses in close games with the Braves is pretty crazy to me. All they did was win in the 90's - just goes to show how scary it was to face Mad Dog.

9. Andy Says:
   November 24th, 2009 at 9:47 am
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   Year	Age	Tm	RS/GS	RS/IP	IP/GS
   1970	19	MIN	4.0	4.1	6.3
   1971	20	MIN	3.5	3.3	7.3
   1972	21	MIN	3.8	3.6	7.5
   1973	22	MIN	4.2	4.2	8.1
   1974	23	MIN	4.1	4.2	7.6
   1975	24	MIN	4.7	4.7	7.9
   1976	25	TOT	2.7	2.6	8.3
   1976	25	MIN	2.8	3.2	7.9
   1976	25	TEX	2.6	2.4	8.4
   1977	26	TEX	4.9	4.8	7.8
   1978	27	PIT	4.2	4.3	7.2
   1979	28	PIT	4.4	3.7	6.4
   1980	29	PIT	3.3	3.6	6.7
   1981	30	CLE	4.0	4.2	8.0
   1982	31	CLE	5.7	8.5	5.1
   1983	32	CLE	3.8	3.8	6.5
   1984	33	CLE	5.3	5.1	7.6
   1985	34	TOT	4.2	4.4	7.9
   1985	34	CLE	4.3	4.6	7.8
   1985	34	MIN	4.0	4.1	8.1
   1986	35	MIN	4.7	4.7	7.5
   1987	36	MIN	5.2	4.5	7.2
   1988	37	MIN	4.3	3.9	6.3
   1989	38	CAL	4.8	4.9	7.3
   1990	39	CAL	4.6	5.0	5.8
   1992	41	CAL	3.1	3.7	5.5
   22 Seasons			4.2	4.2	7.2

   
   

   Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
   Generated 11/24/2009.
10. Andy Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am

    Just above I posted Blyleven's run support numbers

    Let's look at the 4 years I specifically mentioned in my comment above: 1973, 1974, 1977, and 1985.

    In 1973, Blyleven received 4.2 runs per game (that's over each whole game that he started, not just the innings while he was the pitcher of record.) Minnestoa scored 738 runs over theor 162 games, an average of 4.56 per game, meaning that Blyleven got less support than the average Twins pitcher. The average team in the AL scored 4.28 runs per game. So the Twins were above-average but Blyleven himself received just average support league-wise and below-average support for the Twins. (Getting league-average support seems reasonable enough to me...)

    In 1974, Blyleven received 4.1 runs per game. The Twins scored 4.13 runs per game and the league as a whole scored 4.10 runs per game. All pretty much right on average.

    In 1977, Blyleven received 4.9 runs per game (now on the Rangers.) Texas scored 4.73 runs per game and the league average was 4.53. So Blyleven actually received above-average support (by a pretty big margin!) and yet still had a poor W-L record despite having otherwise good numbers. That is bizarre and deserves a game-by-game look at the details.

    In 1985, Blyleven was split across two teams. His overall average was 4.2 runs per game of support. Cleveland scored 4.50 runs per game and the Twins scored 4.35 runs per game, while the AL scored 4.56 per game on the whole. So he did receive below-average support.

    All in all, these numbers don't reveal anything shocking and certainly it doesn't seem to be the case that Blyleven did NOT systematically receive poor run support, at least in the 4 years I've looked at.

    It seems that JT's remarks in #7 above hold the truth, which is that one needs to look at Blyleven's individual starts.

11. JohnnyTwisto Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Andy, you'd also have to account for his home fields, which generally appear to be above average hitter's park. Chris Jaffe, who used to post here once in a while, calculated run support for most important pitchers. His old site only appears to be accessible through webarchive: http://web.archive.org/web/20040811235333/runsupportindex.blogspot.com/2004/06/career-rsis-and-adjusted-wl-records.html

    If you scroll down you can see Blyleven's career "Run Support Index" was 95.64, i.e. more than 4% below average, which is fairly notable over a career as long as his. If you click on his name you can get his yearly RSIs. The four seasons you listed above were 1973 - 93; 1974 - 96; 1977 - 106; 1985 - 87.

    In 1976 he had a 67, which is how he manages to go 13-16 despite a 2.87 ERA (9th best in AL).