Archive for the 'Streak Finders' Category

Last night the  Mariners beat the Cubs 2-0. This was the fifth consecutive game in which the Mariners allowed 1 run or less. (H/T  Craig Calcaterra whose article made me aware of this fact.)

The Mariners' streak is the longest of the season and in fact is the longest since the  Cardinals last May. It should be noted that this is the Mariners' second streak of at least 3 games and that the Mets have already put together 3 separate streaks of 3 games this season. Here are this season's longest streaks

The current PI era (1920-1939,1952-2010) record is held by the 1966 KC A's. However with a gem tonight the M's can join a select list of teams to have extended their streak to 6. Here are the leaders.

Cliff Lee takes on the Cubs tonight.

Andy's post earlier this evening made reference to the fact that Doug Fister has pitched at least 8 innings in 4 of his  starts this seasons. However, as you can see in Andy's chart, Fister has yet to throw a complete game. Which begs the question of which pitcher has the most starts of 8 or more innings without a complete game in a season. (I understand that this is a bookkeeping question. Pitchers can be credited with a complete game in an 8 inning loss or not credited in a long extra-inning appearance.)

From what I can  tell, the PI tool best equipped to answer this question is surprisingly the Player Pitching Streak Finder. I'm going to limit our search only back until 1952 because there seem to be no CG records in the game finders for the '30s. Change the starting year to 1952. Select starter, set CG=0 and select "To Start Season".  Click "Choose additional, advanced criteria" and set IP>=8. This  finds the longest streaks from  the beginning of the season, in which  the starter did not throw a complete game, only considering games of at least 8 IP. This search produces the following list.

Many of these pitchers did ultimately pitch a complete game during that season. Therefore, we need to check their gamelogs (or seasonal stats) for CGs. This can be easily done by clicking on the number of games in the streak (or on the player name.) We can also eliminate Adam Wainwright and Charles Hudson who pitched rain-shortened complete games during their streaks. Eliminating these players leaves us with  this list of pitchers (1952-2010) who are the leaders in most starts of at least 8 innings in a season without a CG.

The Yankees' Robinson Cano has 3 hits in each of his last 3 games and is now leading the AL in hitting.

He joins Hanley Ramirez as the only players in 2010 with a 3-game streak with at least 3 hits per game.

The last players to get 4 such games in a row were Magglio Ordonez and Cody Ross, both in 2008.

With his shutout of the  Reds tonight, not only has Matt Cain thrown at least 8 innings in 4 consecutive starts, he has also not allowed more than 1 run in any of those starts. Since 2000, only 2 other pitchers have put together streaks as long as Cain's.

The last pitcher to go 8+ with at most 1 run allowed in 5 consecutive starts was Roger Clemens in 1997. The current PI-era (1920-1939,1952-2010) leader is Bob Gibson, who did it in 11 consecutive starts in 1968. Here are the leaders:

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The Braves have a 9-game winning streak and a 9-game losing streak already this season.

As you might expect, it's fairly rare for a single team to get two streaks that long in the same season.

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With another dominant performance today, Ubaldo Jimenez has now made 11 starts this season and has not allowed more than 2 runs in any of them. Here are the longest such streaks in PI history. (I've updated Jimenez's numbers to include today's game.)

Other than Marichal, it looks like Jimenez has been the most dominant of the bunch. However, Jimenez is probably less concerned with what he has done and is more concerned with what he is going to do. Here are the season totals for the other pitchers on the list.

As you would expect, all of the starters returned to earth. Most coasted back and posted dominant numbers for the season. Barry  Moore came back without a parachute. Through June 6th, Moore was 5-1 with a 1.86 ERA (He had a short relief appearance mixed into the starts above.) After June 6th, he was 4-7 with a 6.46 ERA. Here is a graph of Moore's progressive ERA for the season.

That's quite a climb. Fortunately for Jimenez, Moore is the exception in this case. An ERA+ above 150 is the norm.

The Mets just shut out the Phillies 3 times in a row. Oddly, my friend Steven was just asking me about "perfect sweeps" where one team doesn't allow a run to another team over an entire series. That's what the Mets just did against the Phillies.

Since 1920, the Phillies have never been shut out more than 3 times in a row. Here are all the 3-game streaks since then:

As you can see, the last time all three shutouts were against one team was in 1979 against the Expos, and that was also a three-game series (in late May of 1979.)

Here are the Mets' longest shutout streaks going back to their start in 1962:

The 1969 Mets had another perfect sweep of the Phillies in a 3-game series, and that followed a shutout of the Cardinals in the last game of the previous series, giving them a 4-game shutout streak.

So the Mets have had two perfect sweeps in their history, both against the Phillies.

Aren't the Mets great? I love the Mets. The Mets are awesome!!

Elias is reporting that last night Hisanori Takahashi became the first Met pitcher in history to pitch at least six shutout innings in each of his first 2 major league starts. What about other teams? Here are all (1920-1939,1952-2010) the other pitchers who have accomplished this:

A couple of notes:

• This is not a very impressive collection of pitchers. Only Garver (129 wins) and Lee (169) were able to pitch long enough to win 100 games.
• Of the 4 pitchers to do this from 2008-2009, only Mazzaro (8 IP 6.75 ERA) has even pitched in the majors this season.
• Takahashi is the 5th pitcher to do this in the past 3 seasons. I assume that this is related to the current philosophy of babying pitchers. In earlier times, similar pitchers probably lost their shutouts in the later innings. Carl Spooner kept his shutouts, but lost his arm.

The Athletics pitched two consecutive shutouts over the weekend.

In their franchise history they've had a few 3-game shutout streaks:

They have a chance to tie their team-record streak when they face the Orioles in Baltimore on Tuesday night.

I also listed the 4 most recent 2-game streaks above. As you can see, the last time the A's did it was in 2007.

The A's became the 5th team so far this season to pitch consecutive shutouts. I have also listed below the most recent team (the 2008 Rangers, for goodness' sake) to pitch 3 straight shutouts:

Why is it surprising to see the 2008 Rangers there?

Here's why:

In 2008, the Rangers had the worst ERA in the AL!

In my earlier post on consecutive games with less than 4 runs, Mark,  a reader, wondered about the longest such streaks for starters.  Here are the longest streaks of starts without allowing 4 runs (1920-1939,1952-2010).

Overall:

To Start a Career:

A lot more names from the recent past than I would have expected. I imagine that this is because pitchers are pulled much earlier in games than they were in the past. Even one of the players from the '60s, Fred Klages, pitched only 57.1 innings in his 12 starts.