The question came to mind:  “How many guys have made at least 5 starts for a team in a season and were really bad pitchers that year?”  And, before I closed the loop on that, the question evolved into “How many guys have made at least 5 starts for a team in a season and were really bad pitchers that year – and did it more than once in their career?”

So, I turned to Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index Pitching Season Finder and set the controls for:  For single seasons, From 1901 to 2007, (requiring GS>=5, IP>=20, and ERAp<=70), sorted by greatest Seasons matching criteria – and I found this list.

As you can see from the list/link, there were 19 pitchers to pull this trick (of GS>=5, IP>=20, and ERAp<=70) three times in their career – in baseball history.  But, only ONE of those 19 did it five times in his career:  Charles Nagy.  See the following for Charles:

  Cnt Age Tm  Lg Year GS   IP  ERA+  G  CG SHO GF  W  L  W-L% SV  H   R   ER  BB  SO   ERA  HR  BF   AB  2B 3B IBB HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS Pk BK WP   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  OPS+  Pit  Str 
+----+---+---+--+----+--+-----+----+---+--+---+--+--+--+-----+--+---+---+---+---+---+------+--+----+----+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----+ 
    1  23 CLE AL 1990  8  45.2   66   9  0   0  1  2  4  .333  0  58  31  30  21  26   5.91  7  208  184  9  0   1   1   1   1   6   2  2  1  1  1  .315  .386  .478  .864  141 
    2  26 CLE AL 1993  9  48.2   70   9  1   0  0  2  6  .250  0  66  38  34  13  30   6.29  6  223  205 11  0   1   2   2   1   6  10  2  0  0  2  .322  .367  .463  .830  121 
    3  33 CLE AL 2000 11  57     60  11  0   0  0  2  7  .222  0  71  53  52  21  41   8.21 15  267  237 12  4   2   2   5   2   0   5  1  0  0  1  .300  .359  .574  .933  129 1011  594 
    4  34 CLE AL 2001 13  70.1   70  15  0   0  1  5  6  .455  0 102  53  50  20  29   6.40 10  325  298 25  0   1   0   3   4  10   3  1  0  0  2  .342  .379  .527  .906  136 1150  723 
    5  35 CLE AL 2002  7  48.2   49  19  0   0  7  1  4  .200  0  76  51  48  13  22   8.88 10  230  211 16  2   1   2   2   2   3   6  0  0  0  1  .360  .399  .597  .996  164  792  485

Part of me wants to give Nagy credit for making them tear the uniform off his back.  But, the other part of me wants to say “Dude, you should have thrown in the towel after 1999 – because, that, my friend, was not a pretty run for you, from 2000 to 2002.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm 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.