Saturday, August 1, 2015

Billy Pierce vs. Bob Gibson: The Only Pitchers With Five Straight Game Scores Of 80+

Since 1914. The Game Score (GS) is a stat created by Bill James to measure how good a pitcher was in a start. It takes into account IP, H, R, ER, BB and SO. Click here to read the definition from Baseball Reference. All stats used here are from BR.

This table summarizes how well each pitcher did. Gibson (1968) had 5 CGs (9 IP each). Pierce (1957) had 3 of those plus 2 games of 10IP (and by my calculation, he had a game score of at least 80 after 9IP in each one-80 in the 84 game and 89 in the 95 game).

On June 4, Pierce beat the Red Sox 1-0 in 10 innings. Ted Williams entered the game batting .407 but he went 0 for 4. Links to the game logs of each pitcher are after the table.

Stat
Pierce
Gibson
IP
47
45
AVG GS
86
82.6
ERA
0.19
0.40
W
5
0
L
5
0
H
16
26
R
2
2
ER
1
2
BB
10
6
SO
33
44
HR
0
0
Lg. AVG GS
51.76
56.85
Avg OPS+ of Teams Faced
96.2
85.8
 
For some reason, the league average OPS+ in each year/league is 93 (I think they compare each team's OPS based on all batters including pitchers to the league with the pitchers taken out). I added up the OPS+ (which is adjusted for the league average and park effects) of the teams Pierce and Gibson faced (each faced one team twice in the streak, Pierce the Indians and Gibson the Mets).

Pierce game logs

Gibson game logs

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