Pitcher who won lost a game

Conversely, a 5. Adding insult to injury, Maroth led he league in earned runs allowed, and shared the dubious distinction of most home runs allowed with two other hurlers. Amongst his loss brethren in the entire history of baseball including the years before , Maroth has the fewest number of complete games pitched 1 , and the highest total of home runs allowed per nine innings 1. San Luis Pinar del Rio saw its share of heavy fighting during the rebellion that ousted Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Pedro Ramos flirted with a loss season often before reaching the inglorious threshold. While pitching for the lowly Washington Senators —60, Ramos managed to twirl 18, 19, and 18 losses respectively. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ramos led the American League in losses over each of the referenced four seasons.

In joining his loss brethren, Ramos shares two distinctions with Mike Maroth: he was the Opening Day starter for his team in and he led the league in home runs allowed.

Unlike Maroth, he set a pace for gopher balls that far outdistanced the second-place finisher, Gene Conley 39— Ironically, two potential scenarios that did not come to fruition might have prevented Ramos from reaching losses in The loss season that Ramos endured in the preceding season could be blamed in large part on the lack of offensive support he received from his teammates.

Ramos produced a nice 3. On a completely separate front, Ramos and his fellow native Cubans nearly sat out the entire season. But play he did, and not for the Yankees. His ERA would increase by an additional one-half run, and he would lead the league in base hits allowed, while serving up the aforementioned league-leading 39 home runs.

Far more famous for being the only pitcher to ever twirl a perfect game in World Series competition, two years earlier Larsen was a part of the humble franchise that relocated from St. Louis to Baltimore in A team in the midst of 14 consecutive non-winning campaigns they would manage to secure a. An anemic offense contributed to the malaise, as the club garnered only 52 home runs team-wide through the season a mere three more than the N.

Unlike the fate that befell Pedro Ramos, Larsen would be traded to the New York Yankees at the conclusion of the season, and attain a certain level of success over five seasons that included the aforementioned perfect game.

Then, on December 11, , Larsen would be traded once more, to the Kansas City Athletics, where he would again post an incredibly low winning percentage during the season:.

There are certainly many other pitchers who could conceivably belong in this problematic grouping with Messrs. Maroth, Ramos, and Larsen, but some of these have carved out a category all to themselves. There are 17 such pitchers since three of whom actually span the period from —25 , not all of whom stand out as prominently as the HOF inductees above, but many of these have an interesting back-story all the same.

Excluding the remarkable season that lefty Mickey Lolich had with the Detroit Tigers in —45 games started, while completing 29 of those—it is not surprising that Phil Niekro and Wilbur Wood are the only pitchers since to take the mound in a starting role 43 or more times in a single season in large part due to the lack of arm strain sustained by a knuckleball hurler. In so doing, both former game winners on numerous occasions also posted two game losing seasons while pitching for their respective sub-.

Much as a knuckleball is baffling to a hitter, the two loss campaigns that Niekro posted appear just as mystifying. Niekro accumulated these two seasons while pitching for a dreadful Braves team that finished last in the N.

One such season was accompanied by 21 wins, truly an amazing win total considering the fact that he led or tied the league lead in some rather dubious categories—41 home runs allowed, walks allowed, hits allowed, and 11 hit batsmen Niekro would also rank second to Vida Blue in earned runs allowed.

Unlike Niekro, fellow knuckler Wilbur Wood did not pitch for a last-place team during his 20 loss seasons—though it was often very close. In the two loss campaigns Wood was one loss shy of three consecutive loss seasons the White Sox finished fifth in a six-team division.

Like his fellow knuckler, pitching for a poor-performing cast contributed mightily to one of the two loss seasons, as his teammates could muster a total of only 18 runs in 15 of those 20 losses. Paul Derringer, St. Louis Browns ; St. It is remarkable to lose 20 games in each of two separate seasons. What may be even more noteworthy is to have done so in consecutive years, for that is exactly what Messrs. Derringer, Ruffing, Hadley, and Craig achieved.

Even more extraordinary is the fact that two of these four pitchers would, at an early stage in their careers, lose at least 47 games over the course of two campaigns and still go on to earn Hall of Fame consideration and, in one instance, induction. Few players have launched their major-league careers as successfully as Paul Derringer did in —leading the N.

Louis Cardinals to a World Championship. A rocky start in precipitated a multi-player trade that sent Derringer to the Cincinnati Reds, a fate that foretold the two consecutive loss seasons, as the Reds were in the midst of a nine-year drought that included five last-place finishes. Arriving in Cincinnati with an 0—2 mark, Derringer went on to lose an additional 25 games—one has to go back to to find a pitcher with more than 27 losses in a single season—followed by 21 losses in Amazingly, Derringer accumulated these losses with ERAs of 3.

The anemic Cincinnati offense tells the entire picture, as it managed only 25 runs in 30 of the 48 total losses Derringer sustained over that two-year period. A 39—93 career mark at the age of 24 would hardly seem conducive to such a later honor.

Ruffing accumulated 25 and 22 losses in and seasons, respectively. Similarities to Derringer do not end with HOF consideration though, for much as Derringer struggled with some very bad Cincinnati clubs, Ruffing would pitched for some incredibly horrible Boston Red Sox teams.

Ruffing joined the Sox in the teeth of this long descent, and a league-low team batting average for nine consecutive seasons —30 contributed to the lack of offensive support that garnered Ruffing 25 and 22 losses. Not discounting the fact that 20 losses for any pitcher is often the result of a certain team-wide ineptitude, Ruffing did not help his cause when leading the league in earned runs surrendered during both the and campaigns.

While the Red Sox would continue a slow crawl out of perpetual second-division league occupancy including last-place finishes in nine of 11 consecutive seasons , Ruffing would be spared a portion of this fate when traded to the New York Yankees early in the season.

Roger Craig never attained the success that Messrs. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. It has long been conjectured that those who prefer the analytical approach to baseball do not possess the capability of feeling actual human emotion.

Or, at best, they experience basic emotions like joy and sorrow only upon viewing advanced metrics. Today I hope to prove that this simply isn't so; that someone who stopped looking at batting averages and runs batted in 20 years ago can still get excited about an old-school counting stat.

Just like a regular human. We are not complete robots, after all; I, for one, am composed of just 32 percent cybernetic materials. Although I've been dismissive of pitcher's won-loss records since before a young go-getter named George H. Bush was in the White House, when they get really extreme -- Max Scherzer 's in , for instance -- I'll be the first to admit they are fun to look at.

And it's no small coincidence that great pitchers have registered some of the best ever. The truth is, I am pulling very hard for Scherzer to become the first pitcher to win 20 games while losing fewer than three. When his teammates got him off the hook Thursday after he fell behind the A's , I was thrilled.

I actually emitted sounds from my throat that closely resembled the cheers made by real fans. Escaping his second loss made it that much easier for Scherzer to go , or And how cool would that be, aesthetically? Very, in my opinion. Is it uncool to think this would be cool? Is it uncool to still be using "cool" at all?

In fact, Scherzer has a decent enough shot at posting the best winning percentage ever and he might -- with further assistance from Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez, et al. What list is that? The one below, which I just made up. To qualify for this list, a pitcher has to have won at least 20 games apologies to Randy Johnson , Greg Maddux and Roy Face. He must also have the fewest losses for his win total. In other words, as a made-up example, the guy with the second-most losses at 22 wins is not on the list, even though his winning percentage might be better than the guy with the fewest losses at 26 wins.

Once a pitcher qualifies on those grounds, his ranking is subjective When it worked - no one seemed to give him just credit. LaRussa is always heralded as a "genius" for batting the pitcher eighth or hitting McGwire 1st a few games in '98, but no manager today could pull off something so inventive and daring.

It gives the manager so much more options, just hope they don't hit it to left. Managers need to take more chances nowa days. It seems a computer program could manage a game. Bobby Valentine was the last great Iconoclast!

Come on, mustachioed disguises!! Ditto for me with the '91 series. Sorry, '91 game 7 didn't see Smoltz go 10, but Morris did. Big time pitcher. You think he had a pitch count?!? I seem to recall someone getting traded between games of a double-header, and thus appeared for two different teams on the same day. Joel Youngblood is, to my knowledge, the only man to get hits for two different teams in the same day.

He singled in a day game, was removed BECAUSE he had been traded, got changed, caught a flight, and then got a pinch-hit for his new team in the late innings. I'm not sure of the day, but I think the teams were Montreal and San Francisco.

I am slightly in error. He was traded from the Expos to the Giants after the season. Then he singled in the seventh. So it wasn't a pinch hit, and I only got one of the teams right. That's a heck of a day - drive in two runs against Fergie Jenkins and then single off Steve Carlton.