After the Mets’ 20-inning, 2-1 loss on Saturday to the mightless Marlins, Matt Harvey has 8 no-decisions in his last 9 starts. Harvey is now 5-0 in 13 starts; if he continued at his current season’s pace, he would finish the season 14-0 with 22 no-decisions in 36 starts. That would set a major league record for no-decisions in a single season. How unusual a year is Harvey having?
Harvey opened 2013 as the one shining bright spot in a dismal Mets season, a season that got even more dismal with Monday’s demotion to AAA of Ike Davis, who led the team in homers by a double-digit margin last season. The Mets’ increasingly punchless offense (even with the stalwart presence of David Wright) is 11th in the NL in scoring and batting an anemic .226/.294/.369 entering Tuesday’s action, and it has caught up to Harvey with a vengeance. After scoring 6 runs a game and going 5-0 in Harvey’s first five starts, the Mets have scored just 2.75 runs a game in his last 8 starts, going 3-5.
Some of those no-decisions have been especially agonizing. On May 28, Harvey went 8 innings against the Yankees, allowed one run, struck out 10 and walked nobody. He threw 114 pitches and got a goose egg; the team ended up winning 2-1 for Scott Rice. On May 7, he went the full 9 innings against the White Sox, striking out 12, walking nobody and allowing only an infield single to Alex Rios in the seventh inning. The 10th inning win went to Bobby Parnell. Saturday, the Mets scored in the second inning and were blanked for the next 18 innings, Harvey leaving after 7 innings once again having struck out 6 and walked nobody, and complaining of a sore back to boot. (The game was the fifth 20-inning game in Mets history; only 42 other games that long have been played in MLB history without the Mets’ involvement). Harvey has yet to allow more than 4 runs in a start this season, and has never gone less than 5 innings in a start in his brief Major League career.
Overall, over the last 9 starts, Harvey has a 2.66 ERA, has thrown 6.78 innings and 105 pitches per start, and has not allowed a single unearned run. In the 8 no-decisions, he has a 2.68 ERA, has cracked 100 pitches six times, and averaged 6.71 innings per start. This ought to be the stat line of a winning streak – good pitching, going deep into game after game – yet Harvey has come up empty. While this string of no-decisions is not totally historically unique, it is very unusual.
Bill James recently looked at the odds of a pitcher winning a game if you measure by “Game Score,” his quick formula for measuring how well a pitcher pitched, taking account of things like walks and strikeouts as well as innings and runs. Looking at a sample of all starts between 1952 and 2011, he found that a Game Score of 51 or above is more likely to mean a win than a loss, and a pitcher with a Game Score of 66 or above will generally have a winning percentage of .800 or above in his decisions. James didn’t separately break out rates of no-decision, but using his numbers, a pitcher is likely to get a decision 93% of the time with a Game Score over 80, 88% of the time with a Game Score over 68; Game Scores in the 50s yield a decision around two-thirds of the time. But not for Matt Harvey: he already has no-decisions this season with Game Scores of 97, 76, 67, 58, and 55.
According to the Play Index at Baseball-Reference.com – which currently only goes back to 1916, but no-decisions were rare before then – the Game Score of 97 on May 7 tied a record previously held by Randy Johnson (twice, in a 15-strikeout outing in 1992 and a 20-strikeout outing in 2001) for the highest ever in a 9-inning no-decision, although I would argue that perhaps the best 9-inning no-decision of all time was Francisco Cordova’s 9 no-hit scoreless innings, 2 walks and 10 strikeouts in 1997, for a Game Score of 95). In fact, Baseball-Reference.com lists only 19 starts in baseball history where a pitcher posted a Game Score of 90 or better in 9 innings or less and got a no-decision (there are many no-decisions with Game Scores above 100, from the earlier years when starters would go deep into extra innings, the extreme example being Joe Oeschger and Leon Cadore on May 1, 1920 pitching to a 26-inning complete game 1-1 tie for Game Scores of 153 for Oeschger and 140 for Cadore. You think your team is having a rough patch? Following the 26-inning game, the Dodgers lost in 13 innings on May 2, lost in 19 innings on May 3, then went on in the succeeding weeks to lose in 11 innings on May 7, win in 10 on May 9, win in 14 on May 14, lose in 11 on May 27 and win the second game of a double-header – with Cadore going the distance again – in 10 on May 29. Somehow, they survived this to go on to win the NL Pennant).
Since 1916, the single-season record for no-decisions is 20, by Bert Blyleven for the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. Blyleven is a particularly odd person to hold this particular record: he got a decision in 80% of his starts over the rest of his career, including a 4-year stretch from 1971-74 when he averaged 34 decisions and 5 no-decisions a year. (In 1973, Blyleven had 37 decisions in 40 starts, going 20-17 with a 2.52 ERA). As late as the 1985-86 seasons, he had 64 decisions and only 9 no-decisions, and in 1985 was the last pitcher to throw more than 20 complete games in a season. But in 1979, pitching for a World Championship team with a deep bullpen (Kent Tekulve, Enrique Romo and Grant Jackson between them averaged 83 appearances and 115 innings apiece and a 2.89 ERA), Blyleven was kept on a short leash by Chuck Tanner. In his 20 no-decisions that season, Blyleven averaged just 5.87 innings per start (going more than 7 innings only twice), posting a 4.76 ERA in those starts, in which the Pirates went 11-9. And he didn’t pitch much differently in the ones they won – in the 11 no-decisions the Pirates won, Blyleven averaged 5.76 innings per start with a 4.69 ERA.
Only five other pitchers have managed as many as 17 no-decisions in a season, and only 15 in total have had 16 no-decisions; here’s how they stack up to Harvey (I’ve listed Runs Allowed rather than ERA so you can see the full effect of Harvey not allowing any unearned runs):
| Year | Pitcher | No-Decisions | Starts | ND% | RA | IP/ND |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Matt Harvey | 8 | 13 | 61.5% | 2.68 | 6.7 |
| 1979 | Bert Blyleven | 20 | 37 | 54.1% | 5.14 | 5.9 |
| 2004 | Odalis Perez | 18 | 31 | 58.1% | 3.65 | 6.3 |
| 1986 | Andy Hawkins | 18 | 35 | 51.4% | 5.69 | 5.4 |
| 1999 | Kenny Rogers | 17 | 31 | 54.8% | 5.91 | 5.6 |
| 2008 | Oliver Perez | 17 | 34 | 50.0% | 4.70 | 5.7 |
| 1987 | Mike Krukow | 17 | 28 | 60.7% | 6.89 | 4.6 |
| 2009 | Randy Wolf | 16 | 34 | 47.1% | 3.43 | 6.2 |
| 2009 | Roy Oswalt | 16 | 30 | 53.3% | 4.48 | 5.4 |
| 1978 | John Montefusco | 16 | 36 | 44.4% | 4.39 | 6.0 |
| 1999 | Eric Milton | 16 | 34 | 47.1% | 6.14 | 5.5 |
| 1917 | Lee Meadows | 16 | 36 | 44.4% | 5.06 | 4.7 |
| 1980 | Dennis Lamp | 16 | 37 | 43.2% | 6.08 | 5.0 |
| 1979 | Randy Jones | 16 | 39 | 41.0% | 4.19 | 6.3 |
| 1993 | Juan Guzman | 16 | 33 | 48.5% | 5.72 | 6.0 |
| 2009 | Joba Chamberlain | 16 | 31 | 51.6% | 6.20 | 4.4 |
As you can see – after we pause briefly while all the Mets fans still reading this stab their eyes out upon seeing Harvey on a chart next to Oliver Perez and Kenny Rogers – Harvey sticks out like a sore thumb on this list, both in terms of how well and how far he pitched into games and the high ratio of no-decisions to decisions. Many of these guys were beneficiaries of winning teams – Guzman went 14-3 for the World Champion 1993 Blue Jays, Krukow was bailed out in games the division champion Giants went on to win on 13 occasions (13 no-decisions in games his team won is the most on record, and he had a 6.51 ERA in those 13 starts). Maybe the most extreme example of a guy who got bailed out constantly by his offense was Dwight Gooden in 1999: Gooden, by then running on fumes, was 3-4 with 15 no-decisions in 22 starts and an 8.25 ERA in his no-decisions. The Indians went 12-3 in those starts anyway, and in the 12 the Indians won, Gooden had a 9.13 ERA and averaged 3.94 innings per start. But that Indians team scored over 1,000 runs; the Mets are on pace to score fewer than 650.
You have to get further down the list to find anybody who had a full season that looks like what Harvey has done so far:
-Cliff Lee in 2012: 3.21 ERA and 7.11 IP/start in 15 no-decisions (half of his 30 starts), going at least 6 innings every time.
-Brad Radke in 2004: 2.52 ERA and 6.66 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 34 starts; like Harvey, Radke threw at least 5 innings and allowed no more than 4 earned runs in any of his no-decisions. Amazingly, Radke voluntarily re-signed with the Twins after that season.
-Joey Hamilton in 1995: 2.87 ERA, 6.69 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 30 starts, going at least 5 innings every time. However, Hamilton allowed 9 unearned runs, so his Runs Allowed average was a less stellar 3.68.
-Jim Deshaeis in 1990: 2.32 ERA, 6.73 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 34 starts, going at least 5 innings each time and never allowing more than 4 runs.
-Pedro Astacio in 1996: 3.16 ERA, 6.64 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 32 starts. This 2011 SABR presentation argued that Astacio, followed by Deshaies and Montefusco, had the most effective no-decisions based on where they left their team when they exited the game: Astacio left with a lead 7 times and a tie 7 more, meaning he was bailed out when losing only once in his 15 no-decisions. In Harvey’s case, he left two of his no-decisions with a lead (scores of 6-4 and 2-1), three tied (scores of 2-2, 1-1 and 1-1) and three trailing (by scores of 1-0, 3-2 and 3-2).
-Perhaps the best pitching in a significant number of no-decisions in one season (and a hopeful case for Harvey) was Clayton Kershaw in 2009. Kershaw got 14 no-decisions in 30 starts, and partly that was because he hadn’t yet learned to imitate Greg Maddux’s pitch efficiency: Kershaw averaged 5.9 innings per start in his no-decisions, and lasted a full 7 innings in only 5 of them. But his ERA in those starts was a measly 1.42; Kershaw’s 10 no-decisions with a Game Score of 60 or better in a season is the most on record, edging out Tom Candiotti in 1993 and Roger Clemens in 2005.
-Candiotti in 1993 (yet another Dodger on this list, thank you Chavez Ravine): 14 no-decisions in 32 starts, a 1.97 ERA and 6.86 IP per no-decision.
The list of consecutive starts without a decision is even more dominated by pitchers who were not in Harvey’s league: three pitchers went 10 straight starts without a decision, and they were all terrible over that stretch: Dick Stigman in 1965 (5.48 ERA, 4.26 IP/start), Randy Lerch in 1977 (6.70 ERA, 4.96 IP/start) and John D’Acquisto in 1977 (8.39 ERA, 2.46 IP/start, which makes you wonder why the Padres even bothered with a starting pitcher when it was D’Acquisto’s turn). The longest stretch of pitching well without a decision is Al Downing in 8 spot starts from 1974-76, a 2.17 ERA in 6 innings a start for a Dodger team with tireless workhorses Mike Marshall and Charlie Hough in the bullpen.
Historically, the guys who got the most no-decisions, and most well-pitched no-decisions, in their careers were just the guys who started the most games. Tommy John leads the pack with 188 no-decisions followed by Don Sutton with 182, but John started 700 games, Sutton 756. The most no-decisions with a Game Score of 60 or better is Nolan Ryan with 41, followed by Roger Clemens (34), Greg Maddux (31) and Don Sutton (30), and all four of those guys won more than 320 games.
But in today’s game, Harvey has something more like company. Among pitchers with 67 or more career no-decisions, three have career ERAs below 3.10 in their no-decisions: Felix Hernandez (2.76), Matt Cain (2.95) and Jake Peavy (3.01). (Greg Maddux had a 3.14 ERA in his 159 no-decisions, to go with a 1.83 ERA in his 355 career wins. The lesson, as always: Greg Maddux was awesome.).
The most logical conclusion from looking at history is that Harvey either won’t keep pitching like this or will sooner or later start getting some wins again. Eventually, as Mets fans will remember, hard luck can turn. In 1987, pitching for the defending World Champion Mets (who would lead the league in runs scored), Ron Darling went an agonizing 14 starts without a win from April 26 to July 3 – 0-6 with 8 no-decisions – at a time when he was the team’s only healthy starter. Darling’s 4.76 ERA over that stretch attests that he was often ineffective, but he also had 5 starts in there with a Game Score of 60 or better; the Mets scored just 3.7 runs a game in those starts. But things turned around, Darling went 10-2 in his next 14 starts…until he tore his thumb diving for a bunt that broke up his no-hitter in the sixth inning on September 11, ending his season and leading to Terry Pendleton’s famous home run to ice the division race later that night.
So yes, Mets fans. It will probably get better. But it can always get worse.
I thought at the beginning of the post: Didn’t the Mets just go through something like this a few years ago?
And there it is – Ollie P in 2008. Interestingly, he ended that season with 8 no decisions in his last 9 starts – a similar stretch to what Harvey is going through now, although Ollie only had one of those games with a game score over 60. (Side note – Ollie’s got a 1.16 ERA over 26 appearances for Seattle this year. %^&*%! At least Jason Bay has been terrible for them.)
In any case, I see no reason to believe that the no decisions will continue on this pace. Projecting 2 months worth of stats over a full season is shaky, but projecting no decisions seems to me especially frought with peril. It seems to me that the hgih number of no decisions so far this year should not necessary tell us anything about the likelihood of more no decisions going forward. If Harvey keeps pitching well, it seems to me that he should be as likely to get winning decisions the rest of the year as if he had gotten decisions in the first 2 months.
And, further on the bright side, Niese has looked decent since his 2 shaky starts at the beginning of May, Gee has put together 3 good starts in a row, and Wheeler’s coming up next week. You gotta believe.
With Harvey and Wheeler the Mets have a great chance to turn the corner quickly…if they can start generating some offense. Hopefully the young studs do not get discouraged with the lack of support.
Well, Harvey got a decision today.
It wouldn’t solve the whole problem, but this sort of thing is why I advocate that when a starting pitcher going five or more innings leaves the game with the lead (and assuming runners belonging to him don’t score to tie the game or give the other team the lead), he will be declared the winning pitcher no matter how many times the lead changes hands after then if his team ultimately wins the game. I see no merit in the bullpen absorbing wins because they didn’t do their job and hold the lead, even if they ultimately get bailed out by the offense. If one finds that rule too permissive, it could be amended to require the starter go at least six innings (which is the benchmark for a quality start, so it would be a little lame to claim that isn’t enough to stake their claim in a win if their team prevails).