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More shutouts than losses

Posted by Andy on November 12, 2009

The new PI arithmetic function (which is my new favorite thing in the world, by the way) allows us to do lots of quick searches for things we always wanted to know.

How about this?

Here are the 130 times since 1954 in which a pitcher had more shutouts than losses in a season. This includes guys with the same number of shutouts and losses, and I did this by setting the arithmetic criteria to SHO > .999 * L (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to review my last post on the new arithmetic function.)

(As an aside, I am willing to bet this feat was MUCH more common before 1954 as complete games were much more common. Guys tended to pitch a lot more shutouts but not necessarily lose a lot more games.)

As you can see, many of those seasons involved a guy having 1 shutout and 1 loss and aren't that interesting. So let's limit it to seasons with at least 4 shutouts:

Rk Player Year SHO L Age Tm W
1 David Wells 1998 5 4 35 NYY 18
2 Bert Blyleven 1989 5 5 38 CAL 17
3 David Cone 1988 4 3 25 NYM 20
4 Orel Hershiser 1988 8 8 29 LAD 23
5 Orel Hershiser 1985 5 3 26 LAD 19
6 Dwight Gooden 1985 8 4 20 NYM 24
7 John Tudor 1985 10 8 31 STL 21
8 Fernando Valenzue 1981 8 7 20 LAD 13
9 Bob Knepper 1981 5 5 27 HOU 9
10 J.R. Richard 1980 4 4 30 HOU 10
11 Jerry Reuss 1980 6 6 31 LAD 18
12 Ron Guidry 1978 9 3 27 NYY 25
13 Tom Seaver 1977 7 6 32 TOT 21
14 Don Sutton 1972 9 9 27 LAD 19
15 Roger Nelson 1972 6 6 28 KCR 11
16 Luis Tiant 1972 6 6 31 BOS 15
17 Vida Blue 1971 8 8 21 OAK 24
18 Denny McLain 1969 9 9 25 DET 24
19 Jim Palmer 1969 6 4 23 BAL 16
20 Ray Culp 1968 6 6 26 BOS 16
21 Luis Tiant 1968 9 9 27 CLE 21
22 Denny McLain 1968 6 6 24 DET 31
23 Steve Blass 1968 7 6 26 PIT 18
24 Bob Gibson 1968 13 9 32 STL 22
25 Larry Jaster 1966 5 5 22 STL 11
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/11/2009.

Here are the top 25 most recent such seasons. See what I mean about this new arithmetic tool finding hidden gems? Most of us could probably have guesses that this feat was achieved by Hershiser in 1988 or Fernando in 1981, but who had Knepper in 1980 or Reuss in 1980?

To have more shutouts than losses over a career is impossible. I checked and the most anybody since 1954 has is 1 shutout and 1 loss. However, some of the really great pitchers managed a shutout total as high as 30% of his career losses:

Rk Player W SHO L To From Age
1 Jim Palmer 268 53 152 1965 1984 19-38
2 Bob Gibson 251 56 174 1959 1975 23-39
3 Juan Marichal 243 52 142 1960 1975 22-37
4 Whitey Ford 209 40 99 1954 1967 25-38
5 Sandy Koufax 165 40 87 1955 1966 19-30
6 Jim Maloney 134 30 84 1960 1971 20-31
7 Denny McLain 131 29 91 1963 1972 19-28
8 Jim Wilson 57 17 51 1954 1958 32-36
9 Dick Hughes 20 4 9 1966 1968 28-30
10 J.A. Happ 13 2 5 2007 2009 24-26
11 Allie Reynolds 13 4 4 1954 1954 37-37
12 Karl Spooner 10 3 6 1954 1955 23-24
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/11/2009.

Note that Ford, Wilson, and Reynolds played before 1954 as well and therefore the numbers above don't actually cover their entire careers. (Karl Spooner pitched in only 1954 and 1955 so his numbers are complete.)

Data for complete games is available way back, so check out the leaders for pitchers, over their career, with at least 50% more complete games than losses:

Rk Player CG L To From SHO W
1 Walter Johnson 531 279 1907 1927 110 417
2 Pete Alexander 437 208 1911 1930 90 373
3 Christy Mathewson 433 185 1901 1916 79 373
4 Eddie Plank 410 194 1901 1917 69 326
5 Warren Spahn 382 245 1942 1965 63 363
6 Ted Lyons 356 230 1923 1946 27 260
7 George Mullin 353 196 1902 1915 35 228
8 Cy Young 331 146 1901 1911 44 225
9 Vic Willis 302 167 1901 1910 42 187
10 Lefty Grove 298 141 1925 1941 35 300
11 Jack Powell 294 194 1901 1912 33 167
12 Bob Feller 279 162 1936 1956 44 266
13 Wilbur Cooper 279 178 1912 1926 35 216
14 Bill Donovan 279 129 1901 1918 35 183
15 Mordecai Brown 271 130 1903 1916 55 239
16 Doc White 262 156 1901 1913 45 189
17 Carl Hubbell 260 154 1928 1943 36 253
18 Chief Bender 255 127 1903 1925 40 212
19 Ed Walsh 250 126 1904 1917 57 195
20 Eddie Cicotte 249 149 1905 1920 35 208
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/11/2009.

As expected, these are just about all names from long ago, with only Spahn and Feller pitching in the latter half of the 20th century. Limiting the years to the last 50 seasons (1960-2009) gives only 3 guys with more than 2 complete games: Marichal, Koufax, and Fidrych. Again, these are guys with at least 50% more complete games than losses.

Among active pitchers, nobody comes even close to qualifying for the list. In fact, we need to drop the ratio way down and look at the only 3 active pitchers who have half as many complete games as losses:

Rk Player CG L To From Age G GS SHO
1 Randy Johnson 100 166 1988 2009 24-45 618 603 37
2 Roy Halladay 49 76 1998 2009 21-32 313 287 15
3 J.A. Happ 3 5 2007 2009 24-26 44 28 2
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/11/2009.

Incidentally, the list above is minimum 37 IP. Two guys (Wade Davis and Devern Hansack) each have 1 complete game and 1 loss.

Related posts:

    Pitchers used in wins vs losses
    Complete game losses
    Under the radar: Pitchers with a low ERA but lots of losses this year
    2 losses in a qualified season
    Consecutive losses with at least 2 homers

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 7:59 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.

18 Responses to “More shutouts than losses”

  1. dave Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 11:46 am

    I like doing searches where the totals are equals. Something like "career games = career hits"

  2. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    I suspect the equals sign is more useful in the Game Finder for finding things like where all of a team's hits are homers (H = HR). I posted on that way way way way back like two years ago but had to do the search manually, i.e. find games with 1 hit and 1 homer, games with 2 hits and 2 homers, etc, but now it can all be done automatically.

    Isn't Sean awesome?

  3. dave Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    I wish there was a way to put in a number and list everything that is that number.
    Like put in "478" and list everything or every person that has that number (career hits, career strikeouts, career HR...)

  4. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Now you're just being silly, Dave. From a baseball stats standpoint, that's pure frivolity. (Nevertheless, I have made such posts...heh)

  5. JohnnyTwisto Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    I don't understand why the SHO search can only be run since 1954. It's not dependent on play-by-play logs and SHO totals exist since the beginning of time.

  6. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Yeah I didn't get that either, to be honest. I was hoping Gerry would chime in on that point.

  7. dave Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    How can we do searches like most HR in a season without hitting more than 1 in any game.
    I recall we debated about that a while ago and found it was Piazza with 40.
    Can that be done easier and more quickly now?

  8. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    I just chatted with Raphy about #7 and reminded me that he recently posted the answer to this right here:

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/1114

    Indeed it is Piazza.

    This could be done using the old version of the PI (and of course can still be done with the new version.) Neither Raphy nor I could think of any new tools in the PI that make this particular search any easier. The new PI Batting Game Finder makes it really easy to find, for example, multi-homer games and the player's total stats in those multi-homer games.

  9. jksesq1 Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Wow! I had no idea that (ShO >= L) had happened this frequently. I would have guessed this only happened a few times.

    It's sad that the CG shutout is almost a thing of the past; only two 10-shutout seasons since 1968 and unlikely to ever happen again. And I forgot what a monster season Tudor had in '85. He had the bad luck to have it fall during one of Doc Gooden's best seasons, and then got outpitched by Saberhagen in the World Series, so his amazing season fell under the radar.

    By the way if any admins are reading, the "oggifinogi" ad server is really killing player searches right now 🙁

  10. DavidRF Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    Not to beat a dead horse, but the 1954 limit is a bit perplexing. Seems to only affect comparative searches and only for pitchers. Batters work fine as seen by my "more walks than hits" query here:

    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/KEhP9

    Maybe this limitation could be removed at some point?

  11. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    I will make Sean aware of it. Never fear!

  12. DavidRF Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    Here's another fun one that comes up from time to time...

    More HR than Strikeouts:

    http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/Y4MqQ

    Done only twice since the 50s.

    Here we can only go back to 1913 as strikeout info is missing for a bit before then (double-checked retrosheet).

  13. gerry Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 6:47 pm

    That Guidry 1978 season, 9 shutouts with only 3 losses, stands out. I did some unsystematic searching through the pre-1954 seasons and didn't find any other pitcher with that great a difference between shutout and loss totals.

  14. gerry Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

    By the way, if you want something really freaky, there have been a few pitchers with more shutouts than wins. According to a post by Wayne McElreavy to the SABR mailing list in 2002, Grover Lowdermilk of the 1911 Cardinals, Herb Bradley of the 1928 Red Sox, Ray Moss of the 1928 Dodgers, and Rip Coleman of the 1957 A's all finished the season with one shutout (in a scoreless tie) and no wins. He also notes that Neil Allen of the 1988 Yankees had more shutouts (1) than complete games (0).

  15. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    To be fair, Raphy pointed out some of Gerry's post in #14 when he and I were chatting last night.

    That Neil Allen thing is weird. Looks like he came in relief with no outs in the game linked below, and proceeded to throw 9 innings of scoreless relief. Hence a shutout but not a CG. Babe Ruth did that too, eh?

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK198805310.shtml

    Al Leiter must have gotten hit by the batted ball or sustained some other injury on the play.

  16. Raphy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Here's the rule that gives Allen the shutout:

    10.18 SHUTOUTS
    A shutout is a statistic credited to a pitcher who allows no runs in a game. No pitcher shall be credited with pitching a shutout unless he pitches the complete game, or unless he enters the game with none out before the opposing team has scored in the first inning, puts out the side without a run scoring and pitches the rest of the game without allowing a run...

    Other than Allen the only other player since 1954 to pitch a shutout that was not a complete game was Bob Miller in 1955.

    Andy, are you thinking of the game in which Ruth was tossed and Ernie Shore came in and was perfect?

  17. Andy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    Uh yeah, I had that backwards.

  18. Raphy Says:
    November 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

    Miller has no shutout in his record for 1955. I don't know why. (Unless the rule was changed between Miller and Allen)

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