I've loved Jayson Stark ever since he wrote for the Philadelphia Enquirer, and his contributions to ESPN and ESPN.com are among the best. His Rumblings & Grumblings column is always interesting.

Today I'm using the PI to look at one of his comments in the most recent edition of Rumblings & Grumblings.

Stark said this about Matt Cain:

"We couldn't find a single pitcher in the expansion era who had an ERA as good as Cain's (3.15), or a hits-per-nine-IP rate as good as Cain's (7.02 per nine IP) who wound up a season with a winning percentage as lousy as his is now (.222)"

So I did a PI Pitching Season Finder with the following restrictions: 1961-present, pitchers qualified for the ERA title, ERA of 3.15 or less, ranked by lowest W-L%:

  Cnt Player             W-L%   ERA  Year Age Tm
+----+-----------------+-----+------+----+---+---+
    1 John Dopson        .214   3.04 1988  24 MON 
    2 Jim Abbott         .318   2.77 1992  24 CAL 
    3 Nolan Ryan         .333   2.76 1987  40 HOU 
    4 Sammy Stewart      .333   2.32 1981  26 BAL 
    5 Gary Ross          .333   3.00 1976  28 CAL 

It would appear that Stark missed John Dopson, who had 26 games and starts for the 1988 Montreal Expos, finishing 3-11 (.214%) with an ERA of 3.04. Still, he's the only one Stark missed, as the next worst season by Jim Abbott saw a lofty .318 W-L%.

Maybe Jayson should become a B-R PI subscriber?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 am and is filed under Season Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.