Just because baseball-reference.com is the best ways for a geek like me to make the last hour of work go by, I was able to do some meaningless research (over a few days, of course).
Today, shockingly, I was looking at great years by pitchers, and started with Dwight Gooden in 1985.
In his 24 wins, Doc was 24-0 (duh) with a ridiculous 1.07 era. In his four loses, his average stat line was 7 ip, 6 hits, 2.25 runs, 7 k’s and 1.25 walks. You know what happens if you have numbers like that over 35 starts? 245 IP, 210 hits, 245 K’s and just 44 walks.
His last two no decisions came in September, and in each of those games he pitched 9 innings without giving up a run. The Mets won one in extra innings, and lost the other. If they score just one run in the first 9 innings of each of those games, Gooden ends up 26-4 with a 1.53 era, 18 complete games and 10 shutouts.
The Mets were in a battle for first with the St. Louis Cardinals that year, and in the last month of the season, Gooden’s era was .34. He had blood alcohol levels higher in all of his DUI stops. Okay, so that last part isn’t true.
Here’s something else, that’s just as insane. Over his last nine starts in 1984, Gooden was 8-1 with 5 CGs, 105 k’s in 76 innings. So over 44 starts he was 32-5, 352ip, 240hits, 373 strikeouts, with 21 complete games and 10 shutouts. His era was 1.43. Oh, and in those 5 loses, he gave up a combined 10 runs.
Pedro Martinez had one of the all-time great stretches, with his best years coming in 1999-2000. The best he did over a 44 game stretch was 31-7 in 307 innings, giving up 213 hits, with 8 complete games and 3 shutouts and striking out 436 and had a 1.79 era.
In 1968, Bob Gibson set the record for the lowest ERA by a starting pitcher for a season, a miniscule 1.12. That year he made 35 starts, so I looked up how he did in his next nine. Not really sure how I settled on 44 starts, probably because I just happened to see how amazing Doc was for his 44 start stretch. So including his first 9 starts of 1969, Gibson was 29-11 with a 1.20 era. He struck out 339 in 382 innings. Gibson completed an astounding 35 of those 44 starts, 16 of them were shutouts.
I couldn’t write about this without looking at Roger Clemens and some of the remarkable seasons he had, and I thought it’d be better to do his best 44 before the “era” began, and his best 44 consecutive starts after the juice was loose.
Using his 1990 stats and first 13 starts of ’91, Rocket went 30-9 with 2.02 era, 304 k’s, 10 complete games and 4 shutouts. And then in Toronto, when he MAY have gone on some sort of substance, he went 29-10 with 2.20 era, 385 k’s, 13 complete games and 5 shutouts.
So Doc ends up with the most wins, fewest loses, top 3 in strikeouts, second in complete games and shutouts. That’s dominating, to say the least. And I have to ask myself, would could have been? And so I had to try and answer myself. I looked at the career he had up through 1991, when he still resembled the Dr. K and from 1992-2000 I used the pitcher that baseball-reference lists as having the most similar career to Gooden, his former teammate, David Cone. Had Gooden had the years Cone had over those nine seasons, he would have retired (at age 35) with 249 wins, a .660 winning %, a 3.23 era and 3,115 strike outs. He would be tied for 47th all-time in wins, 20th in winning %, 16th in strikeouts. He’d have an era lower than Bob Feller, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, and Phil Niekro.
And he’d be retired at 35, 10 years younger than Randy Johnson is now. Clemens last pitched at 44. Greg Maddux at 42, even David Cone pitched till he was 40.
Man, what could have been. A Hall of Famer and all-time great, that’s what could have been.
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