Winning one for the team, finding the toughest division, and saluting Joey Votto

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Starting pitchers aren’t always given credit for their work.

A starter might sparkle on a given night by working seven shutout innings, only to leave with the score 0-0. Or he might be removed in the fifth inning, even though his club holds the lead. If both games end in victory, he’ll have played a key role. But he won’t get the W in either instance. Lucky relievers will be the recipients.

Baseball Reference offers an alternative to the traditional system. It tracks the outcome of all games that a starting pitcher works, regardless of whether he figures in the decision.

Take Tanner Bibee as an example. The Cleveland righty started 24 games during the first 21 weeks of the current season. His personal record was a respectable 10-5 as of August 22. But the Guardians did even better in the total group of games that Bibee started, going 18-6.

Eighteen is the largest number of team victories for any starter in either major league. Seven starting pitchers were involved in 17 team wins over the 21-week span.

Listed below are the pitchers in each league whose clubs have fared the best in games that they started. Pitchers are ranked by most team wins, then by the fewest team losses. Their personal W-L records are in parentheses. Relief appearances, of course, are not included in any of these stats.

This has been a terrible season for everybody affiliated with the Chicago White Sox, but especially for Chris Flexen.

The righthander was saddled with a 2-12 record on August 22. That’s bad enough, but the bottom line was much worse. The Sox lost 22 of Flexen’s 24 starts, making him the only starter to suffer more than 18 team losses as of the 21-week mark.

Patrick Corbin of the Washington Nationals comes next with 18 team losses. The five worst records in each league can be seen below. Pitchers are ranked first by most team losses, then fewest team wins.

  • 1. Patrick Corbin, Nationals, Team 7-18 (Personal 2-12)

  • 2. Ryan Feltner, Rockies, Team 6-17 (Personal 1-10)

  • 3. Dakota Hudson, Rockies, Team 3-15 (Personal 2-12)

  • 4. Trevor Rogers, Marlins, Team 6-15 (Personal 2-9)

  • 5. Matt Waldron, Padres, Team 11-15 (Personal 7-11)

The New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles are waging a dogfight for first place in the American League East. Both are more than 20 games over .500. The next two clubs in the five-team division, the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays, were also on the fair side of 50-50 at the 21-week milestone.

So it comes as no surprise that the AL East, all in all, is the toughest division in baseball.

Today’s graph shows the cumulative winning percentages for all five clubs in each of the six divisions, with the AL East on top at 338-296 (.533). The runners-up are the NL West and NL Central.

And the weakest division? That’s clearly the AL West, where only the Houston Astros are on track to finish above .500. The division’s cumulative record as of August 22 was 299-337 (.470).

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Joey Votto retired earlier this month, concluding a big-league career that spanned 17 seasons, all of them with the Cincinnati Reds. The first baseman spent time in the minors this summer, hoping to make a comeback with his hometown Toronto Blue Jays, but it wasn’t to be.

Today’s quiz presents five questions about Votto’s 2007-2023 tenure in Cincinnati. You can find the answers at the bottom of this newsletter.

1. Votto won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2010. Who was his closest competitor in the balloting?

2. Votto led the NL seven times in a key statistical category. What was it?

  • A. Batting average

  • B. Doubles

  • C. On-base percentage

  • D. Slugging average

3. Which of the following was the only National League category that Votto never topped?

  • A. Batting average

  • B. Doubles

  • C. On-base percentage

  • D. Slugging average

4. Votto drew more walks than any other NL batter in five different seasons between 2011 and 2017. What was his highest annual total?

5. Votto was renowned for his prowess at the plate, but he was also a skilled first baseman in his prime. How many Gold Gloves did he win?

  • A. One

  • B. Two

  • C. Three

  • D. Four

Much is made of the quality start, a designation granted to any starting pitcher who works at least six innings and surrenders no more than three earned runs. (I have mocked the QS in the past, but that’s a subject for another week.)

But no stats are kept at the opposite end of the scale, no tabulations of un-quality starts. So I’m filling the void with the disaster start. A starter qualifies for a DS if he goes no more than four innings and yields six (or more) earned runs.

You might assume that disaster starts are rare. Not so. Jordan Montgomery of the Arizona Diamondbacks has already fashioned five of them this year, leading the majors. Kenta Maeda of the Detroit Tigers is on his heels with four.

Nine pitchers had at least three disaster starts on their records as of August 22, based on raw data collected by Baseball Reference. Here’s the list:

The 1984 Detroit Tigers — ranked as the greatest team of baseball’s Modern Era (1961 to the present) — flexed their muscles 40 years ago this week.

The Tigers finished on top in five of their six games between August 20 and 26, 1984. But it was the way they won that impressed the baseball world. Detroit outscored the Oakland Athletics and California Angels by a combined score of 57-23.

Pitchers Jack Morris and Milt Wilcox both picked up two wins during the week, pushing their respective records to 17-8 and 15-7.

The Tigers, as a whole, were 41 games above .500 on the morning of August 27, 1984. Their 86-45 mark put them 12 games ahead of the second-place Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East.

The 1962 New York Mets are remembered (for the moment) as the losingest team in the Modern Era, though the 2024 Chicago White Sox could surpass their record of 120 defeats in a single season.

The Mets added six losses to the bank during the week of August 20-26, 1962, though they also accumulated three wins. It was, as you can see, a remarkably busy nine-game week, featuring two doubleheaders and no off-days.

The highlight probably came on August 24, when Mets pitcher Jay Hook outdueled his counterpart on the Los Angeles Dodgers, Don Drysdale, a future Hall of Famer. Hook scattered six hits in a 6-3 complete-game victory. It was only the seventh loss of the year for Drysdale, who already had 22 wins to his credit.

But the Dodgers enjoyed the last laugh. They had an 85-46 record at daybreak on August 27, giving them the National League lead. The Mets were last at 33-98, a full 52 games back.

1-C. (Pujols was the runner-up, though the race wasn’t close. Votto received 31 of the 32 first-place votes. Pujols took the other.)

2-C. (Votto topped the league in OBP each year from 2010 through 2013, then again from 2016 through 2018.)

3-A. (He led the NL in doubles in 2011, in OBP on the seven aforementioned occasions, and in SA in 2010.)

4-B. (Votto drew 143 walks in 2015. Nobody else in the league received more than 124 that year.)

5-A. (His only Gold Glove came in 2011.)



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