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Mosts of the Decade - Pitchers

By Dave Fleming

December 1, 2009

Counting down the pitchers who tallied the most wins, saves, strikeouts, and hits-batsmen of the decade.

Games Started

1.	Livan Hernandez	332
2.	Javier Vazquez	327
3.	Jeff Suppan	321
4.	Barry Zito	320
5.	Jamie Moyer	315

I’ve finally learned to spell Livan’s name correctly. The decade saw nine pitchers make 300 or more starts, which is consistent with the 1990’s (10 pitchers with 300+ starts) and 1980’s (again, 10 pitchers with 300+ starts). It is possible that the number of starts a pitcher makes, which has been dropping since baseball started, has reached a point of leveling off. The leaders of the 2000’s and the 1990’s:

	2000's	GS	1990's	GS
1.	Livan Hernandez	332	Greg Maddux	331
2.	Javier Vazquez	327	Tom Glavine	327
3.	Jeff Suppan	321	Chuck Finley	316
4.	Barry Zito	320	John Smoltz	315
5.	Jamie Moyer	315	A. Benes/K. Brown	314

Almost the exact same totals, obviously.

I’m not sure it means anything, but the pitchers of the 1990’s list are better than the list from the ‘Aughts. Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz will be elected to the Hall of Fame, and Kevin Brown and Chuck Finley were elite pitchers. The best pitcher on the 2000’s list is Vazquez, who is a supremely underrated pitcher, but not a Hall-of-Famer.

Wins

1.	Andy Pettitte	148	5.(t)	Roy Oswalt	137
2.	Randy Johnson	143	7.	CC Sabathia	136
3.	Jamie Moyer	140	8.	Mark Buehrle	135
4.	Roy Halladay	139	9.(t)	Greg Maddux	134
5.(t)	Tim Hudson	137	9.(t)	Mike Mussina	134

Showing the top-ten, just to be more inclusive. Looking at the list, there are three players who are obvious Hall-of-Famers: Maddux, Johnson, and Mussina. Of the remaining seven, I’d guess that three or four will get there, though it is anyone’s guess who those three or four will be. The least likely to make the Hall are Buehrle and Moyer. You’d have to think Oswalt, Halladay, Sabbathia, and Pettitte all have puncher’s chances.

As I mentioned somewhere else, Pettitte’s 148 wins are the fewest to lead a decade. The full list:

	Winningest Pitchers
1900's	Christy Mathewson	236
1910's	Walter Johnson	265
1920's	Burleigh Grimes	190
1930's	Lefty Grove	199
1940's	Hal Newhouser	170
1950's	Warren Spahn	202
1960's	Juan Marichal	191
1970's	Jim Palmer	186
1980's	Jack Morris	162
1990's	Greg Maddux	176
2000's	Andy Pettitte	148

Only Jack Morris isn’t in the Hall of Fame, which is ammunition for the folks who thing he oughtbe there, earned-run average be damned.

Loses

1.	Livan Hernandez	124
2.	Javier Vazquez	116
3.	Jeff Suppan	110
4.(t)	Jeff Weaver	106
4.(t)	Barry Zito	106

Lots of carry-over from the Games Started list. There were nine players to amass 100 or more loses over the decade.

For reasons I can’t fully fathom, Jeff Suppan is one of my twin brother’s favorite players, to point that whenever Suppan has a good game, I can rely on getting an e-mail about it. My brother is a Red Sox fan; Jeff Suppan posted a 5.87 ERA with Boston.

Innings Pitched

1	Livan Hernandez	2201
2	Javier Vazquez	2163
3	Mark Buehrle	2061
4	Barry Zito	1999
5	Jamie Moyer	1980

If Games Started is leveling off, the total number of innings pitched isn’t. Over the decade, just three pitchers topped 2000+ innings, an all-time low:

	# of Pitchers with 2000+ IP
2000's	3
1990's	10
1980's	10
1970's	20
1960's	9

The 1970’s was a crazy decade for pitchers: there were probably dozens of factors that made it such a unique decade for pitchers. I should spend some more time thinking about that decade.

Complete Games

	Complete Games
1.	Roy Halladay	47
2.	Livan Hernandez	36
3.	Randy Johnson	32
4.	CC Sabathia	28
5.	Curt Schilling	26

This number, not surprisingly, has dropped off precipitously over the decades. Halladay, who is almost 20% ahead of the #2 man, wouldn’t crack the top-five from the previous decade:

	2000's		1990's
1.	Roy Halladay	47	Greg Maddux	75
2.	Livan Hernandez	36	Randy Johnson	65
3.	Randy Johnson	32	Jack McDowell	61
4.	CC Sabathia	28	Kevin Brown	58
5.	Curt Schilling	26	Clemens/Schilling	57

Of course, we’re a long ways away from the complete game totals of 1900’s:

1900's	CG's
Cy Young	351
Vic Wills	324
Christy Mathewson	308
George Mullin	285
Eddie Plank	285

Shutouts

	Shutouts
1.	Roy Halladay	14
2.	Randy Johnson	12
3.	Tim Hudson	11
4.	CC Sabathia	11
5.(t)	Chris Carpenter	10
5.(t)	Mark Mulder	10

Six pitchers notched ten or more shutouts over the decade. The last time any pitcher notched ten shutouts in a single season? John Tudor, 1985.

The record for most shutouts in a single season is 16, reached by George Bradley in 1876 version of the National League, and tied by Pete Alexander in 1916.

Here’s a weird tidbit: the two men who reached 16 shutouts were both named for Presidents: Bradley’s full name was George Washington Bradley, while Alexander’s full name was Grover Cleveland Alexander.

The only pitcher named after Abraham Lincoln never notched a shutout: Abraham Lincoln ‘Sweetbears’ Bradley made six starts in the majors, but never went the full nine.

That said, Tommy Bridges, whose full name was Thomas Jefferson Davis Bridges, did lead the league in shutouts in 1932. He is the only pitcher named after a President of the United States and a President of the Confederate States.

Theodore Roosevelt (Ted) Lilly has just two shutouts in 255 career starts.

Strikeouts

1	Randy Johnson	2182
2	Javier Vazquez	2001
3	Johan Santana	1733
4	Pedro Martinez	1620
5	CC Sabathia	1590

Not a surprising list, I suppose. Despite the strikeout rate climbing over 7.00 this year, the leaders of the 1990’s posted more impressive totals, due largely to the higher number of innings pitched:

	2000's	K's	1990's	K's
1	Randy Johnson	2182	Randy Johnson	2538
2	Javier Vazquez	2001	Roger Clemens	2101
3	Johan Santana	1733	David Cone	1928
4	Pedro Martinez	1620	John Smoltz	1893
5	CC Sabathia	1590	Chuck Finley	1784

This is the second decade that Randy has led in strikeouts. Here are the leaders per decade:

1900's	Rube Waddell	2251
1910's	Walter Johnson	2219
1920's	Dazzy Vance	1464
1930's	Lefty Gomez	1337
1940's	Hal Newhouser	1579
1950's	Early Wynn	1544
1960's	Bob Gibson	2071
1970's	Nolan Ryan	2678
1980's	Nolan Ryan	2167
1990's	Randy Johnson	2538
2000's	Randy Johnson	2182

Dazzy Vance, whose 1464 strikeouts is the second lowest of any decade leader, blew away the competition: the next closest was Burleigh Grimes, with 1018.

All the players listed above are in the Hall of Fame except Randy Johnson, who is as close to automatic as they come. Won’t get the seagull vote, though.

Walks

1	Barry Zito	826
2	Doug Davis	736
3	Livan Hernandez	720
4	Carlos Zambrano	698
5	Russ Ortiz	684

Four of the five players listed have ‘z’s in their names, which is telling. I wonder if Doug Davis’s middle name is Zoro.

Zito hasn’t ever led the league in walks, but he’s been top-ten every year from 2001-2009. That’s consistency, folks.

Wild Pitches

1.	Matt Clement	88
2.	A.J. Burnett	83
3.	John Lackey	83
4.	Miguel Batista	79
5.	Jose Contreras	72

No Wakefield, which surprised me. He’s actually sixth on the list, tied with Daniel Cabrera, but I figured that as the only practicing knuckler, he’d be first on the list.

In fact, Wakefield has never led his league in Wild Pitches. Looking back, Phil Niekro led the league in Wild Pitches three times, and his brother Joe Niekro led four times. But Charlie Hough never did, nor did Hoyt Wilhelm or Wilbur Wood or Tom Candiotti. More knuckleballers don’t lead their league in wild pitches.

There are a few reasons for this. One, a knuckleball tends to be slower than a regular pitch, so it is less likely to roll far enough away for a runner to advance. Two, knuckleballs are often ruled passed balls by the scorers, and will thus show up in the catcher’s defensive record. Lastly: base stealers probably run a great deal anyway against knuckleball pitchers: I might be wrong on this, but I’d assume that if the runner is already breaking prior to the wild pitch, it will generally be ruled a stolen base, and not a passed ball or a wild pitch.

One more thing: the 1945 Washington Senators had a pitching rotation that featured four old knuckleballers (Dutch Leonard, Roger Wolff, Mickey Haefner, and Johnny Niggeling) and a kid named Marino Pieretti. Leonard was a star prior to the war, but the other three knuckleballers were wartime call-ups: Roger Wolff, who went 20-10 in 1945, made the majors as a 30-year old rookie in 1941, and was quickly pushed out of the majors when war ended. Haefner was a rookie in 1943, and he hung on for a few years after the war ended. Look for Haefner to show up on one of the tables below.

Johnny Niggeling made the majors as a 34-year old rookie in 1939, and was an ineffective starter and reliever prior to the war. He was forty-one during the 1945 season, and was probably the least effective of the quartet of knuckleballers. He was an Iowa native, born in the town of Remsun, which is located in the northwest corner of the state. After his career ended, he worked as a barber in nearby LeMars. He hung himself at the age of 60, shortly after his wife divorced him.

Marino Pieretti, the lone ‘normal’ on the team, posted a 14-13 record, which was the only winning season he had during his six years in the majors.

The 1944 Senators team finished with a 64-90 record, good enough for last place in the American League. Prior to the start of the 1945 season, the team’s only good player, Early Wynn, was drafted into the military. But the 1945 team, led by their four old knuckleballers, posted an incredible 87-67 record, finishing in 2^nd place, just one-and-a-half games behind the Detroit Tigers.

Hit-By-Pitches

1.	Tim Wakefield	107
2.	Jeff Weaver	106
3	Jamey Wright	101
4.	Vicente Padilla	99
5.	Chan Ho Park	97
6.	Randy Johnson	89
7.	Pedro Martinez	86

Ah, there’s Wakefield: apparently a lot of his wildest pitches end up hitting the batters.

Pedro Martinez is the Don Drysdale of his generation, I suppose; the pitcher most accused of head-hunting.

What made Drysdale and Bob Gibson stand out is the degree to which they were breaking the trends of hitting batters. A quick glance at the leaders in HBP, by decade:

	Leader	HBP
1900's	Joe McGinnity	154
1910's	Walter Johnson	112
1920's	Howard Ehmke	118
1930's	Chief Hogsett	57
1940's	Mickey Haefner	37
1950's	Tommy Byrne	59
1960's	Don Drysdale	112
1970's	Jack Billingham	87
1980'	Dave Stieb	104
1990's	Kevin Brown	103
2000's	Tim Wakefield	107

Drysdale’s numbers of hit-batsmen aren’t particularly dramatic by recent standard. Rather: Drysdale stood out because there were so few hit-batsman during the previous three decades.

Earned Run Average

1.	Pedro Martinez	3.01	6.	John Smoltz	3.28
2.	Johan Santana	3.12	7.	Roger Clemens	3.34
3.	Roy Oswalt	3.23	8.	Randy Johnson	3.34
4.	Jake Peavy	3.26	9.	Roy Halladay	3.40
5.	Brandon Webb	3.27	10.	Tim Hudson	3.50

That’s using a minimum of 1000 innings pitched. Here’s the same list, minimum of 500 innings pitched:

1.	Mariano Rivera	2.08	6.	Tim Lincecum	2.90
2.	Billy Wagner	2.40	7.	Pedro Martinez	3.01
3.	Joe Nathan	2.53	8.	Jason Isringhauser	3.03
4.	Francisco Rodriguez	2.53	9.	Scot Shields	3.03
5.	Trevor Hoffman	2.77	10.	Keith Foulke	3.04

We get some closers on the list, and Tim Lincecum, who has won two of the decade’s Cy Young Awards.

Adjusted ERA (ERA+)

Here are the top-five in ERA, alongside the top-five in ERA+:

	ERA			ERA+
1.	Pedro Martinez	3.01	1.	Pedro Martinez	152
2.	Johan Santana	3.12	2.	Johan Santana	143
3.	Roy Oswalt	3.23	3.	Brandon Webb	142
4.	Jake Peavy	3.26	4.	Randy Johnson	137
5.	Brandon Webb	3.27	5.	Roy Oswalt	135

Pedro and Johan hold their ground, but Brandon Webb and Randy Johnson each move up two spots. Jake Peavy, who ranks 4^th in ERA, is just 16^th in Adjusted ERA.

Strikeouts per 9 Inning Pitched

1.	Randy Johnson	10.42	6.	Jake Peavy	9.02
2.	Kerry Wood	10.05	7.	Curt Schilling	8.86
3.	Pedro Martinez	9.93	8.	Jason Schmidt	8.73
4.	Oliver Perez	9.20	9.	Josh Beckett	8.54
5.	Johan Santana	9.12	10.	A.J. Burnett	8.40

The immortal Oliver Perez finally makes an appearance on the list. I suppose this is the reason Scott Boras likened Perez to Sandy Koufax in his booklet to the Mets.

Walks-And-Hits Per Inning Pitched

1	Pedro Martinez	1.036	6	Roy Halladay	1.171
2	Johan Santana	1.113	7	Greg Maddux	1.172
3	Randy Johnson	1.114	8	Danny Haren	1.178
4	Curt Schilling	1.129	9	Jake Peavy	1.182
5	John Smoltz	1.151	10	Ben Sheets	1.201

Here’s a question: out of ERA, K/9 IP, or WHIP, which stat does the best job of selecting the top-ten pitchers of the decade?

There’s a lot of crossover: Pedro, Johan, Randy, and Peavy make all three lists, which leaves us with six in each row:

ERA	WHIP	K-9
Roy Oswalt	Curt Schilling	Kerry Wood
Brandon Webb	John Smoltz	Curt Schilling
John Smoltz	Roy Halladay	Jason Schmidt
Roger Clemens	Greg Maddux	Josh Beckett
Roy Halladay	Danny Haren	A.J. Burnett
Tim Hudson	Ben Sheets	Oliver Perez

I think any conversation that has Oliver Perez, Kerry Wood or A.J. Burnett as one of the top-ten pitchers of the decade is a little silly, so strikeout rate goes out the window.

Between WHIP and ERA, John Smoltz and Roy Halladay makes both lists, leaving four pitchers to choose from. For ERA you have Oswalt, Webb, Clemens, and Hudson. For WHIP you’d have Schilling, Maddux, Haren, and Sheets. It’s a tough call, but I think ERA wins out.

Saves

1.	Mariano Rivera	397
2.	Trevor Hoffman	363
3.	Jason Isringhauser	284
4.	Billy Wagner	284
5.	Francisco Cordero	250

Francisco Rodriguez has notched 287 saves through his Age-27 season, and as such is miles ahead of Hoffman and Rivera when they were that age. In fact, Rodriguez is miles ahead of all relief pitchers:

	Saves Thru Age 27
1.	Francisco Rodriguez	243
2.	Bobby Thigpen	178
3.	Rod Beck	162
4.	Gregg Olson	161
5.	Billy Koch	144

Barring an injury, K-Rod will almost certainly retire with the most saves in history, though it is possible that other pitchers will be nipping at his heels by then.

David Flemingis a writer living in Iowa City, IA. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com

COMMENTS (11 Comments, most recent shown first)

ventboys
I agree with you, Mike. Has any pitcher ever had better mechanics than Rivera? He looks like he's long tossing out there.
10:34 PM Dec 10th

mikeclaw
The closing statement about K-Rod seems ludicrous to me. Is it possible? Of course. But the idea that "barring injury it is almost certain," that's nuts. Because it assumes that he will age the way that Rivera and (to a lesser extent) Hoffman have aged. But they are anomalies. To say he will almost certainly break the saves record - wherever that record ends up, since those two gentlemen are still pushin' it - means that you assume he will still be racking up huge numbers of saves into his mid-30s and possibly beyond. In other words, you're assuming he ages like these two guys, instead of aging like just about everyone else.

Could he get the record? Certainly. But at this point, especially considering that we don't know how far Hoffman and Rivera will push the record, if I had to bet, I'd say K-Rod doesn't retire as the all-time saves leader.

11:46 AM Dec 6th

ventboys
I'd be hesitant to call the numbers here a trend. It was a weird decade, something of a transition decade. I'd be curious to see the numbers from 1996-2005, and make a judgement from that. It does seem fairly clear that, at least in the NL, wins per top shelf starting pitcher are dropping some. I don't assume that this will continue in the long run, mostly because it seems that we have reached something of a floor. It's possible that, in 30-50 years, this period will stand out as the low mark for starter wins as well as innings.

This is, as usual, great stuff Dave. What's all this crap about you wanting to "have a life", and "needing to eat more than once a day" and "family obligations", and "sleep deprivation", that keep you from cranking out an article every 2-3 days? Common, there are qualified professionals that can feed you through a tube....

We should be doing studies on writers, and whether they should be in a 3 or 4 week rotation. Where is the line? 1000 words, 2000 words? When do they get pulled for an editor?
1:19 AM Dec 6th

Kev
Dave,

Worth waiting for. What criteria would you use to pick the starting pitcher of the decade? With all other data imperfect to some degree by randomness, I wouls suggest: HR, BK, WP, HBP, BB, SO, BB/9, SO/9, and SO/BB to be the stats least affected by randomness (which I think is heavily underrated). I wonder what would happen if we assigned a "run" value (HR=1, triple=.75) and an arbitrary value of 5 to SO/BB, 4 to SO/9 and BB/9,and 3 to SO and BB, and produced one sum, then listd the 5 top per decade and compared them with the names resultant from whatever conventional method you choose to pick the t best pitchers pitcher of the decade. Would this help us with the irritating issue of rndomness? Thanks.
1:10 PM Dec 3rd

evanecurb
Edit: Number 6 should say "Four days rest is better than three days." I don't think anyone has really tested the five day hypothesis.
10:33 AM Dec 3rd

evanecurb
Dave:

Like you, I am also fascinated with 1970s starting pitchers and the number of innings thrown. I have posted in the Reader Posts section a few fun facts about Lolich, Wood, and Perry and the number of innings they threw during that period. I believe there was a ten year period where Gaylord's lowest innings total for any one season was 280 and his average was 325. Lolich and Wood's peak five year averages for innings were higher than Perry's. Ryan's pitch counts during the period may have been higher than these other guys, (though I've not seen a study).

And I don't really know how to explain exactly how we got from there to where we are today in terms of innings pitched by starters. I think there are a few hypotheses that are worth studying. All of these have been studied but few conclusions have been reached on any of them.

1. The number of pitches thrown in any one start is a risk factor in and of itself.
2. Younger pitchers seem to be more at risk than pitchers in their late twenties-early thirties.
3. Pitchers who are not used to pitching a complete game find it difficult to do so.
4. Due to changes in the offensive environment, specifically more strikeouts, more home runs, and more scoring, both pitches per at bat and at bats per inning have increased during the past twenty years.
5. Higher salaries = higher investment in each pitcher = more cautious use of them.
6. Four days rest is better than five days.
7. It's better to have a fresh, mediocre major league relief pitcher on the mound in the eighth inning than a tired, above average starting pitcher.
8. The platoon advantage is important enough that it makes sense in close games to change pitchers for that reason two or three times per game.

THE BOOK, Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Times, and others have all done studies on some of these topics. The 8 statements above are generally accepted to be true by today's GMs and managers. None of the statements have been disproven by any of these studies, but I don't think any of the 8 have been conclusively proven to be true, either.

Nolan Ryan and the Rangers have made a decision to test current usage patterns by training their young pitchers to throw more innings per start. It will take a few years for this program to yield any results, but it will be interesting to follow.

What managers in the 70s were doing was maximizing the number of pitches thrown by their best pithcers. This was not because they had never heard the 8 statements above, but because they either (1) didn't believe them to be true, (2) didn't care about the future and thought their strategy gave them the best chance of winning in the present, (3) made a conscious choice to deploy the strategy of maximizing innings of certain starters after careful condiration of all available facts, or (4) used that pattern because that was the accepted way of doing things.

The interesting thing about the massive numbers of innings compiled by those pitchers is that, in some cases, it worked. Not everyone suffered the fate of Steve Busby or Mark Fidrych. Some of these guys had very long careers. The bottom line is that we don't really know why Steve Carlton could pitch so many innings so well for so long, but Dean Chance couldn't. I believe that someday we will know a lot more about it than we do now, and when that happens, usage patterns will shift again depending on what we learn.

From a pure business standpoint, I am amazed that more young talented starters aren't asked to do more. Teams don't have to pay players much in years 1-3, prior to arbitration eligibility. Seems like they would load 'em up with innings in those first three years, then sign them in year four to a market deal, and trade them for more prospects.

Not too different from the way that young starters were (mis)used in the sixties and seventies.

10:31 AM Dec 3rd

Robinsong
Loved the article, especially the Washington Senators story and the historical perspective on HBP. Few comments:
1) Cy Young's complete game total in the 00s was greater than the number of starts by any pitcher in the last decade, and it was less than 1/2 his career total. Livan Hernandez, #2 in 00s, is on a pace to beat Young's record by about 2230. Yet people keep saying Dimaggio's hit streak would be the hardest record to break.
2) The pitchers of the 90s (and the 80s) lost a dozen starts to strikes.
3) I think a major factor in the 70s was something Bill James identified in an early Abstract: the jump in salaries after free agency. Pitchers worked hard to stick around, and it was still an era of 4-man rotations and many complete games.
4) Halladay is over 30% ahead of Hernandez in complete games.
10:01 AM Dec 3rd

evanecurb
Neat stuff. Regarding Mussina as a number 3 starter: He was absolutely, positively the number one starter on the Orioles teams for whom he pitched in the 1990s. From 1991-99, he was 136-66, with a 130 ERA+ and a 1.17 WHIP. He had the misfortune of peaking during the decade of Maddux, Clemens, Pedro, Smoltz, Glavine, and Johnson, so he was never the best pitcher in baseball.
6:29 PM Dec 2nd

DaveFleming
I think Mussina is an obvious Hall-of-Fame candidate. His career W-L record is 270-153...I know that W-L isn't a gret measure of a pitcher, but he's 117 games over .500 on his career, and no one who is 100+ games over .500 has ever been kept out. His ERA is 3.68, which isn't terrible. Considering the contexts of his era, it's impressive: he has an adjusted ERA of 123.

What are the strikes against Mussina? He didn't win 300 games, but it's not like 300 wins in the benchmark for the Hall. He won 20 just once, but he was in the top-10 in Wins 9 times. He never won a Cy Young, but he finished in the top-6 nine times.

There isn't an arguement AGAINST Mussina that holds any kind of water: he was a very good pitcher for a very long time.

One more thing: it is very likely that Mussina's numbers will look MORE impressive in the future than they did during his career. During his career, it was still common to win 20 games, and his inability to do that was always a strike against him. Now, it's a rare thing: Tim Lincecum has two Cy Young awards, and zero 20-win seasons.

Power-hitting ballplayers in the 1980's had their HOF chances diminished by the uptick in offense during the 1990's: that's why the likes of Dawson and Murphy are having such trouble getting elected. The opposite will be true for Moose: his career will look better to future voters than it did to those who observed him during the 1990's.
5:46 PM Dec 2nd

schoolshrink
Loved it as well. So ... who is the pitcher of the decade? I would have to go with Mariano, followed by Santana, Johnson, Burnett, Pedro, Schilling, Pettitte, Halliday, Sabathia, and Oswalt.

You know way more than I, but is Mike Mussina really a lock for the Hall of Fame? Whenever I think of Mussina, I think of the third or fourth best pitcher on teams that by all means should have won championships because of their talent. I never thought of him as great, even if his numbers match up fairly with other HOF inductees. But if I am all wet ... so be it.
12:56 AM Dec 2nd

Richie
Thanks again, Dave!
11:05 PM Dec 1st

Mosts of the Decade - Pitchers

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