Quick – have you had a bad day at work this year? Pretty silly question, right. Well, if you’re among a select group of pitchers, maybe it’s not such a silly question. I’m talking about guys who deliver an honest day’s work almost every time they pitch and almost never have an “off day”.

As of this writing, there are still 5 pitchers this year who have put in a honest day’s work (HDW) every time they’ve pitched, and one (Ivan Nova) who had his streak snapped with his most recent outing earlier this week. After the jump, I’ll look more at the most reliable performers among major league pitchers.

So, what do I mean by an “honest day’s work”. I’m calling that 90 or more pitches AND 5 or more innings pitched. What I’m trying to capture here are:

(a) being effective enough to give your team at least 5 frames and save wear and tear on the bullpen; and

(b) being effective long enough that you’re not removed until you’re spent physically.

What’s not captured are the efficient outings where a pitcher goes 7 or more on fewer than 90 pitches to then give way to the setup man and/or closer. But, pitching that many innings on so few pitches is a pretty unusual occurrence (since 2005, the number of such starts has ranged from 67 to 142 each season, about 2% of starts).

Anyway, here are the longest HDW streaks to start a season since 1988 (when pitch count data are available on B-R).

The streaks in red are full season – every start matching the HDW criteria. The five active streaks I alluded to are in green. Note that there are 5 streaks from 2012 and 4 each from 2010 and 2011 in the top 38 for the past 25 seasons – more than one-third of the list from less than one-eighth of the seasons. Just a fluke, or consistent with a swing back towards pitcher domination?

Randy Johnson (no.6) and Roy Halladay (no. 13) would have had full season streaks with one more pitch in one start. Nolan Ryan (no. 15) almost certainly had a full season streak in 1989, but pitch count data are missing for one of his starts where he pitched into the 8th inning and faced 32 batters. Greg Maddux is unjustly missing here owing to his stature as one of the few pitchers of this period to consistently deliver a full outing in fewer than 90 pitches.

For the most such games in a season, this is the list.

Roy Halladay’s name appears just once in the first list and not at all in the second, but he is among the most consistent HDW pitchers of recent years. Here are the pitchers for the same seasons (since 1988) with the most seasons averaging 7 IP per start (min. 20 starts and starting in 80% of appearances). Active pitchers are indicated in green.

Notice how the numbers of pitchers to do this consistently has dwindled in recent years, with the formulaic approach to a starter-setup man-closer mentality, batters working the count to wear down pitchers, and hard pitch count limits. But, perhaps this may be starting to change. I mentioned at the top that only about 2% of starts since 2005 have involved a starter going 7+ innings on fewer than 90 pitches. So far this season, there have been 96 such games, already more than each of the past 3 seasons and on pace for the most since 2005 (142 games) and possibly the highest since 2002 (167 games). Here are those data.