A familiar television advertisement from years ago featured the actor John Houseman as pitch man for the investment firm Smith Barney. The tag line had Houseman solemnly intoning “Smith Barney makes money the old-fashioned way – they earn it!”.

In this post, I’ll look at pitchers who, apart from their run support, earn their losses, and can thank their defense for helping out with their wins.

Here are pitchers who did not allow an unearned run over an entire season (min. 162 IP).

I was actually surprised there were as many of these seasons as there are. The frequency prior to the last decade was more what I was expecting. My hunch is that these seasons have become more frequent with the demise of the complete game and the unabated increase in strikeouts – ergo, the longer a pitcher stays in a game and the more balls in play there are, the more chance there will be for an error and an unearned run. Which makes Ted Wilks 1944 season quite remarkable – 16 complete games and just 70 strikeouts (although he did have that league-leading WHIP). I was thinking he also had a makeshift, wartime defense behind him, except that isn’t true. Other than rookie Emil Verban at 2B (an “experienced” rookie at 28), every Cardinal regular was a holdover from the previous season (and, except for outfielder Danny Ditwhiler, for at least two previous seasons). But, I digress.

The other thing that popped out at me was that overall this was a pretty average (or even mediocre) group of seasons – median ERA+ of 100, 5 seasons of 90 or below, 4 of 110 or above. Also, aside from Wilks and a couple of others, a pretty healthy dose of runners on base (only 4 of 13 with WHIP below 1.25) – the formula cited conventionally for putting pressure on the defense and thus inducing errors.

Going to 95% of runs allowed are earned (up to ~5  unearned runs allowed), these are the pitchers with the most seasons.

Obviously, heavily tilted to pitchers of the past 20 years with much reduced numbers of complete games and also much higher strikeout rates resulting in fewer balls in play. Among the 29 pitchers with 3 such seasons are: Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Jered Weaver, Matt Cain, Jeff Francis, Derek Lowe, Livan Hernandez, Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon, Al Leiter, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, Kevin Appier, Tom Browning, Rick Sutcliffe, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton and Jim Palmer. Actually, that’s most of those 29 pitchers – as you can tell, preponderantly name pitchers.

For a career (min. 1000 IP), here are the retired players whose unearned runs are less than 6% of their runs allowed.

So, every player is from the past 30 years, and most are of the low-CG and high-K style prevalent in that period.

Going to a higher threshold for the 1961-90 period, here are are the retired players (min. 1000 IP) whose career unearned runs are less than 8% of their runs allowed.

The first four names on the list are generally well-regarded pitchers though, aside from Eckersley, do not have impressive ERA+ scores during this period.

Similarly, for the 1941-60 period, pitchers with career unearned runs of less than 9% of runs allowed (only the highlighted four were less than the 1961-90 8% threshold).

A fairly unimpressive assortment of pitchers, with only 2 of 13 with an ERA+ above 110, and two others (Wehmeier, Scheib) with attrocious scores of 85 or less.

For 1920-40, these are pitchers with career unearned runs less than 12% of runs allowed. Only the highlighted two were less than 10%, and none were below the 1941-60 threshold of 9%.

As a group, mostly a nondescript set of hurlers, with only 3 of 13 with ERA+ above 110. Players’ equipment and field conditions probably contributed a bit to higher error rates in this period.

Finally, for the 1901-19 period, here are pitchers with unearned runs of less than 22% of runs allowed, almost double the threshold of the 1920-40 period. Only the highlighted pitchers were below 20%.

Unearned runs are much more prominent in this period with few strikeouts, a lot of balls in play, and also lots of small-ball plays (bunts, hit-and-runs, steals) that test defenses and induce errors. Again, players’ equipment and field conditions may also have played a sizable factor in contributing to errors. As a whole, this group of pitchers are arguably the best of any of the career lists.

One initial surprise for me is how many lesser quality pitchers made these lists. But, on second thought, maybe that isn’t such a surprise. After all, poor pitchers can surrender runs quite readily, without any assistance from the defense. Also, they’re more likely to get yanked early, reducing the chances of errors behind them. Conversely, better pitchers will surrender fewer runs in total, so any unearned runs they allow will represent a higher percentage of runs than for lesser hurlers.