Fat, Quality, Toad?
Posted by Steve Lombardi on June 20, 2007
If I were to say to you, "Name five Yankees pitchers, since 1973, to string together 10 or more starts in a row where they pitched a 'quality start,'” what would your answer be?
Some would say Ron Guidry or Andy Pettitte. Others might add Mike Mussina, David Cone and/or Roger Clemens. Heck, some might suggest Tommy John, El Duque Hernandez or Jimmy Key. Some might even say Doc Medich, Mel Stottlemyre or Ed Figueroa.
Hideki Irabu anyone?
It’s true. Using the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Pitching Streak Finder, and setting it for “Longest Streak with IPouts>=6, ER<=3 From 1973 to 2007, Playing for NYY” shows the five pitchers in question to be:
Ron Guidry (15 games in a row) [1978-04-08 to 1978-06-22]
David Cone (13 games in a row) [1997-04-21 to 1997-06-23]
Mike Mussina (12 games in a row) [2006-04-04 to 2006-05-31]
Hideki Irabu (10 games in a row) [1998-04-19 to 1998-06-16]
Phil Niekro (10 games in a row) [1984-04-04 to 1984-05-24]
Niekro is a surprise – and a good trick answer. But, Irabu is a shocker. I never would have guessed at that one.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Steve,
A few things:
1) Good call on which word to replace using "Quality"...
2) In terms of Yankee-dom, Irabu is remembered so negatively that it's hard to remember that he was such a key member of that 1998 team that went all the way
3) Holy cow--120 innings over 15 starts for Gator is 8 innings per start. The days of pitching consistently so long into games are truly long gone.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:52 am
Thanks Andy.
Agreed, that Yankee magic of 1998 even reached to Irabu. His ERA that season was .6 above league average. He was a useful pitcher that season...as far as the others, well, not so useful.