Most Consecutive Appearances in a Loss to Start a Career
Posted by Raphy on August 16, 2010
In another post, reader ES made the following observation:
Not only did Scott Ruffcorn not win any games over his Major League career, his team lost all 30 Major League games he ever appeared in. That is quite a feat to pitch that many games and never be involved in a victory.....
Which naturally leads to the question of the record for such a feat.
Using the PI pitching streak finder, we can search for consecutive appearances by a pitcher in a team loss to start a career. Here are the results:
| Rk | Strk Start | End | Games | W | L | GS | CG | SHO | GF | SV | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | HBP | WP | BK | Tm | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Walker Cress | 1948-04-27 | 1949-04-27 | 32 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 61.1 | 61 | 32 | 30 | 45 | 32 | 2 | 4.40 | 1 | 0 | 0 | CIN |
| 2 | Scott Ruffcorn | 1993-06-19 | 1997-08-17 | 30 | 0 | 8 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 70.1 | 86 | 77 | 67 | 70 | 46 | 8 | 8.57 | 9 | 9 | 1 | CHW-PHI |
| 3 | Charlie Bicknell | 1948-04-22 | 1949-09-18 | 30 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 0 | 54.0 | 61 | 44 | 41 | 34 | 9 | 8 | 6.83 | 2 | 4 | 1 | PHI |
| 4 | Larry Burchart | 1969-04-10 | 1969-09-30 | 29 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 42.1 | 42 | 28 | 20 | 24 | 26 | 2 | 4.25 | 1 | 1 | 0 | CLE |
| 5 | Dave DeBusschere | 1962-04-22 | 1963-07-14 | 27 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 56.1 | 41 | 26 | 23 | 39 | 33 | 5 | 3.67 | 3 | 5 | 0 | CHW |
| 6 | Bob Ayrault | 1992-06-07 | 1992-09-16 | 26 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 35.1 | 30 | 15 | 14 | 15 | 21 | 0 | 3.57 | 1 | 0 | 0 | PHI |
| 7 | Greg Booker | 1983-09-11 | 1984-08-24 | 26 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 46.1 | 55 | 22 | 20 | 23 | 19 | 3 | 3.88 | 0 | 3 | 0 | SDP |
| 8 | Wayne Schurr | 1964-04-15 | 1964-07-11 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 48.1 | 57 | 22 | 20 | 11 | 29 | 3 | 3.72 | 0 | 1 | 0 | CHC |
| 9 | Lou Koupal | 1925-04-17 | 1928-09-10 | 25 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 50.2 | 61 | 38 | 24 | 28 | 13 | 1 | 4.26 | 2 | 3 | 0 | PIT-BRO |
| 10 | Dale Matthewson | 1943-07-03 | 1944-07-21 | 24 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 0 | 46.2 | 39 | 18 | 18 | 21 | 18 | 1 | 3.47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | PHI |
Walker Cress started his career by appearing in 32 consecutive losses, but his career was 33 games long. Like Ruffcorn, Charlie Bicknell's streak lasted his entire career, making them the co-(post 1920) record holders for this category.
August 16th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Man, -3 WAR for his career, poor Ruffcorn. Makes me wonder what the worst (aka most negative) career WAR of all time is.
August 16th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Also noteworthy [though not baseball-related]: #5 on your list went on to have a Hall-of-Fame basketball career.
August 16th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Poor Dave DeBusschere. His closest game in his first season, 1962, was a 4-run loss. Looks like he mostly did mop-up duty until he finally saw action in a win in the middle of '63.
Memories of that season probably made his 1970 NBA title taste even sweeter.
August 16th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Bill Bergen, -17.6 WAR over 11 seasons. A career BA of .170. Leaders list of batters
For pitchers, lowest WAR is Bill Bailey, -6.3 WAR also over 11 seasons (with some breaks in his case). Leaders list of pitchers
Poor Bills..
August 16th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Two of the top six are former Red Barons. Not surprising as the "PHI" abbreviation gets a little too much use
August 16th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
So what's the longest streak/ longest career of this kind for position players?
August 16th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
[...] 16th, 2010 in Reds History, Reds Trivia Former Cincinnati Red, Walker Cress, apparently is the “biggest loser” of any player in baseball history at the start of his career. Cress went an entire season plus two [...]
August 16th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
The Charlie Brown Award goes to...
August 16th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
DeBusschere also started 0-7 in the NBA.
August 16th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
@6 Since 1920- Charlie Small played in 25 major league games for the 1930 Red Sox and lost them all. In fairness, most of his appearances were pinch hits, so they were probably losing when he came in to the game.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?n1=smallch01&t=b&year=1930
August 16th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
It would have been funny if the one win Cress appeared in was over Bicknell's team, since the streaks were simultaneous and in the same league. Sadly not.
August 16th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
@4, the number 3 guy on the worst WAR for position players is Bob Buhl, who was actually a pitcher. Not easy for a pitcher to make it onto such a list, since they just don't get enough at-bats, but, as a hitter, Buhl was up to the challenge.
I note that it doesn't seem to be possible to ask play index for WAR less than a negative number, or maybe I just didn't work out the right way to input negative numbers.
August 16th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Naturally, I had to look up Terry Felton. His streak ended at one. The second game in which he appeared was a win for his team. He got pulled after seven innings trailing 3-0, but the Twins rallied to win it 5-3. One run in the eighth was followed by four in the ninth (in a road game).
August 16th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Was DeBusschere considered a "Bonus Baby"?
August 16th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
A little OT, but John Smoltz's team won 73 consecutive games that he appeared in from 6/3/02 to 5/25/03
August 16th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
@4,
Thanks man! I wouldn't have pegged Manny Parra for -3 career WAR...he seems better than that...guess not!
Also, Juan Castro has had a 15 year career with -10.5 career WAR...why does he keep getting paychecks?
August 16th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I think Ruffcorn gets the nod over Bicknell for all-around-awfulness. He was 0-for-6 with 6 strikeouts as a batter (though he did draw one walk) and managed an astonishing four errors in 14 fielding chances (including a "perfect" three for his first three).
In his first ML start, Ruffcorn got through the lineup once facing the minimum (due to two line-drive DPs). In the fourth, everything went to pieces. Walk-Steal-Wild Pitch-RBI Single-Steal-Walk-RBI Single-DOUBLE Steal-Walk before a merciful RBI double play and groundout to end the inning.
August 17th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Reminds me of something else I've been thinking about. What's the longest streak of hitless PAs to begin a career? Kelly Shoppach went 0-19 to start his career (over two seasons) before getting a pinch hit late in a blowout game. He managed to get a BB and HBP in there so he was 0 for his first 17 ABs.
The only reason I remember any of this is because I'm an Indians fans and I was at the game when he got his first hit. It was April 16th 2006 in a game against the Orioles at Camden (I live in the DC area and like to make it up to Camden for at least one Indians game a year). The O's put up 13 runs in the first 6 innings, so the place emptied out quickly; although there weren't many people there to begin with. So by the time the 9th came around with the score 18-9 I had moved from my upper deck seats to the second row in the left field stands right next to the foul pole. With 2 outs Shoppach came in to pinch hit for Victor Martinez and lined a single up the middle. I stood up and started cheering. The other 20 people in the section stared at me like I was crazy, because after all it was single with 2 outs in the 9th in a 9-run game. So I yelled out to the entire section "It's his first career hit after starting 0 for 17!" Most of the people then gave him an acknowledging golf clap.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL200604190.shtml
August 17th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I recognize the distiction, but there was one player, Chidago Cub Jack Warner (1962-65) who appeared in 33 career games and no wins. He is not on the above list because one of his 33 appearances was in a tie.
August 17th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
On the opposite side, Jose Valverde holds the most consecutive appearances in games won by his team with 16. Kelvim Escobar had 15, and Taylor Tankersley, with 10, was the only other player in double digits. Tankersley pitched a total of 5.2 innings, so he can't take all of the credit.
For starters, John Whitehead went 8-for-8 in 1935. The rest of his career, he was 41-54.
August 17th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Choo Choo Coleman began his career with the 1961 Phillies, who lost 32 of the 34 games in which he appeared.
August 19th, 2010 at 4:03 am
I'm honored to see I inspired a blog post! I just happened to notice that oddity about Ruffcorn while looking at his page from the player birthdays list last year. I saw one of his appearances in 1997, and was surprised to notice in his '97 game log that the Phillies lost all of those games he appeared in, so I checked back to his previous seasons and was blown away someone could be that bad/unlucky... though I'm a bit disappointed to see it wasn't quite the record to start a career...
But finding out Jose Valverde is on the opposite end of the spectrum makes up for that. I've sponsored his BR page for 5 years due to his status as one of my fantasy team's greatest legends, and I remember that hot streak at the beginning of his career quite well.... 😀
August 25th, 2010 at 8:54 am
4 out of 10 on this list were Phillies...