A.J. The Wild Man

A.J. Burnett has thrown a league-leading 23 wild pitches this year in 172.1 innings pitched, one of the grislier stats in an increasingly ugly season. How historic is that?
Well, among pitchers who have qualified for the ERA title since 1893 (the dawn of something like modern pitching, when the mound was moved back to 60 feet 6 inches), Burnett’s rate of one wild pitch per 7.493 innings pitched would be the highest by a fairly significant margin:

Pitcher WP Year Age G GS IP BB SO ERA BF HBP IP/WP BF/WP
A.J. Burnett 23 2011 34 29 29 172.3 78 148 5.27 761 7 7.493 33.087
Jack Hamilton 22 1962 23 41 26 182.0 107 101 5.09 820 5 8.273 37.273
Juan Guzman 26 1993 26 33 33 221.0 110 194 3.99 963 3 8.500 37.038
Red Ames 30 1905 22 34 31 262.7 105 198 2.74 1064 3 8.756 35.467
Matt Clement 23 2000 25 34 34 205.0 125 170 5.14 940 16 8.913 40.870
Tim Leary 23 1990 32 31 31 208.0 78 138 4.11 881 7 9.043 38.304
Nolan Ryan 16 1981 34 21 21 149.0 68 140 1.69 605 1 9.313 37.813
Tony Cloninger 27 1966 25 39 38 257.7 116 178 4.12 1132 6 9.543 41.926
Jaime Navarro 18 1998 31 37 27 172.7 77 71 6.36 802 7 9.593 44.556
Ken Howell 21 1989 28 33 32 204.0 86 164 3.44 827 2 9.714 39.381

Red Ames’ 30 wild pitches qualifies as the post-1893 record. Needless to say, Nolan Ryan in 1981 is the only one of these guys to win the ERA title. (For curiosity – Sandy Koufax in 1958 would have made this list at #9 if he’d thrown just a few more innings). Among pitchers who threw at least 15 wild pitches but didn’t qualify for the ERA title, here’s the top 10; Burnett would rank 12th:

Pitcher WP Year Age G GS IP BB SO ERA BF HBP IP/WP BF/WP
Stu Flythe 16 1936 24 17 3 39.3 61 14 13.04 229 3 2.458 14.313
Scott Williamson 21 2000 24 48 10 112.0 75 136 3.29 495 3 5.333 23.571
Dennis Higgins 15 1969 29 55 0 85.3 56 71 3.48 383 3 5.689 25.533
Hector Carrasco 15 1995 25 64 0 87.3 46 64 4.12 391 2 5.822 26.067
Jason Grimsley 16 2000 32 63 4 96.3 42 53 5.04 428 5 6.021 26.750
John Wetteland 16 1989 22 31 12 102.7 34 96 3.77 411 0 6.417 25.688
Bobby Witt 22 1986 22 31 31 157.7 143 174 5.48 741 3 7.167 33.682
Bo Belinsky 16 1967 30 27 18 115.3 54 80 4.68 510 8 7.208 31.875
Johan Santana 15 2002 23 27 14 108.3 49 137 2.99 452 1 7.222 30.133
Mac Suzuki 16 2001 26 33 19 118.3 73 89 5.86 542 8 7.396 33.875

As you might imagine, this was the only season of Stu Flythe’s major league “pitching” career; he was not one of Connie Mack’s finer discoveries. Bobby Witt’s near-legendary rookie season missed by just a few innings topping Burnett.
It would not be useful to chart the guys with higher rates from the pre-1893 era, when you had guys with no catcher’s mitts or shin guards catching pitches thrown from 50 feet, often from a standing position several feet behind the plate. A few high points: Mark Baldwin threw the MLB-record 83 wild pitches (in 513.2 innings, one per 6.19 innings pitched) in 1889; Jim McElroy in 1884 threw 46 wild pitches in 116 innings, one every 2.52 innings pitched, the worst rate for anybody with 100 or more innings. A 19-year-old pitcher named Dan Collins threw 12 wild pitches in 11 innings in 1884; the only other guy to match that in more than 3 innings pitched was Rich Rodas, who threw 5 wild pitches in 4.2 innings for the Dodgers in 1983.
PS – A look at wild pitches on a per-pitch basis here. Funny fact: I saw a tweet linking to that a few days ago, favorited it (I have trouble clicking through links when reading Twitter from my Blackberry so I tend to favorite things to read later) and completely forgot about it until after I wrote this post and started getting a nagging feeling I’d seen something about Burnett’s historic wildness before.
UPDATED after the season: AJ improved just a bit to finish with 25 wild pitches in 190.1 IP, still easily the record (one every 7.61 IP, or every 33.48 batters faced). In the postseason he added 1 more in 5.2 innings, facing 24 batters.

3 thoughts on “A.J. The Wild Man”

  1. “Red Ames’ 30 wild pitches qualifies as the post-1893 record.”
    Hey, let’s not put any ideas into AJ’s head . . . .
    Then again, seeing if he can break the record maybe the only reason left for keeping my eyes open when he is pitching.

  2. Surprised to see no knuckleballers here. Looked up Phil Niekro who is 7th on the all-time wild pitch list. Always amongst the leaders in wild pitches each year but he was also piling up 300+ innings and throwing 10-20 wild pitches. Wonder how many passed balls he caused.

  3. Jim,
    I thought that also, but knuckleballers seem more prone ot passed balls because, I assume, the speed of the pitch is such that catchers have sufficient time to react enough to get their glove on the pitch.
    Wasn’t Jason Grimsley the pitcher who threw a ball at a fan who was hectoring him? It would seem he had the statistical basis for a defense of that claim.

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