Fielding in baseball (if not fielders, necessarily) is getting better all the time. Improvements in equipment, field conditions and, especially, defensive positioning, mean today’s players have a leg up on their predecessors. Indeed, today’s computer analysis of batter and pitcher tendencies is of a sophistication unimagined even as recently as a decade ago. And, to top it off, recent years have seen progressively fewer balls in play due to ever increasing numbers of strikeouts. The end result – fewer errors and fewer unearned runs.
Nevertheless, unearned runs haven’t disappeared entirely and some pitchers seem to allow more of them than others. As an example, these are the starting pitchers of 2012 (min. 150 IP) with the three highest ratios of unearned runs allowed to total runs allowed.
Rk | Player | R | ER | IP | Year | Age | Tm | G | GS | CG | SHO | W | L | BB | SO | HR | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | C.J. Wilson | 93 | 78 | 188.0 | 2012 | 31 | LAA | 31 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 9 | .571 | 80 | 159 | 3.73 | 101 | 17 |
2 | CC Sabathia | 85 | 71 | 176.0 | 2012 | 31 | NYY | 25 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 13 | 6 | .684 | 40 | 169 | 3.63 | 115 | 21 |
3 | Aaron Harang | 82 | 69 | 164.0 | 2012 | 34 | LAD | 28 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 9 | .500 | 77 | 123 | 3.79 | 101 | 14 |
Surprised? I mean those are all pretty decent pitchers. Why would it be those guys? After the jump, I’ll explain why perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising.