This past spring, birtelcom wrote a piece about Greg Maddux, looking at his pitching efficiency in terms of pitches thrown per inning. As pitch count data are consistently available only since the late 1980s, his analysis was limited to the period of the past 25 seasons or so. That being said, Maddux was clearly in a class of his own in terms of minimizing pitches thrown per inning pitched.

In this post, I will approach the same topic a bit differently to extend the analysis through the entire history of professional baseball. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the name Greg Maddux again figures very prominently.

When Greg Maddux retired four years ago, possibly his milestones that were least remarked upon were these:

• 5,000 innings pitched
• 20,000 batters faced

Maddux reached both plateaus in his final season, becoming just the 13th pitcher all time to do so. This dual accomplishment speaks to longevity, high workload and, most importantly, consistent and unrelenting efficiency in retiring batters, so much so that it will likely be a long time (if ever) before another pitcher reaches either plateau, never mind both of them.

For the record, Greg Maddux faced batter number 20,000 on June 20, 2008 as San Diego hosted Detroit. The trivia answer is Placido Polanco, batting in the first inning and hitting a weak grounder to short. Maddux reached 5,000 innings in his second-to-last game, pitching for the Dodgers against the Giants on September 19, 2008. Out number 15,000 was World Series MVP Pablo Sandoval, popping up to short in the 3rd inning.

Here are the 5 and 20 club members.

Nice assortment of pitchers spread across the past 15 decades, missing only the 1931-41 period. I sorted the list by WHIP, as a proxy for BF per IP. Only the pitchers with the bolded names (each of whom pitched a significant portion of his career in the dead-ball era) have a lower BF/IP than Maddux’s number of 4.0774.

Less efficient pitchers who reached 20,000 batters in fewer than 5,000 innings are these gentlemen.

Calling Mathews and Welch less efficient is probably a bit unfair as, separated by a century from Blyleven and Clemens, they would have had more batters to face owing to many more errors made behind them.

Are there more efficient pitchers who have career marks over 5,000 innings and under 20,000 batters? In a word – no. However, Walter Johnson, the only 5/20 pitcher with career BF/IP below 4, had 5039.1 IP and 19,729 BF at the end of the 1923 season.

Here are the pitchers with career BF/IP below 4 (min. 2000 IP), an achievement exclusive to pitchers playing primarily in the dead-ball era.

Which pitchers avoided the magic 4 batters per inning level most consistently? Here are the pitchers with the most seasons (min. 162 IP) below this threshold.

Maddux and Seaver stand out here as the only live-ball era pitchers on the list, with Maddux’s accomplishment the more impressive given the offensive context he pitched in.

The live-ball era list for the above looks like this.

Strictly a post-expansion phenomenon, likely due to the continuing (and not independent) trends of fewer errors and more strikeouts.

Finally, who will be the next 5/20 pitcher, or even the  next 5 or 20 pitcher? (or, maybe the question should be “Will there be such a pitcher?”). Here the IP leaders among active (or not yet officially retired) pitchers.

I won’t bore you with the Batters Faced list – it’s all the same guys except that Miguel Batista replaces Johan Santana in 20th spot (it’s worth noting that Santana’s BF/IP of 4.08 is the best here, just ahead of Halladay, the only other pitcher below 4.1).

I sure don’t see anyone currently pitching who has even a remote chance of reaching either the 5 or the 20 milestone. The reason isn’t hard to spot. Just look at the CG column – Roy Halladay leads with 66 and only Livan Hernandez also has more than 35. Compare that to Maddux’s 109 CGs, easily the lowest total of any 5/20 pitcher. Barring an unexpected return to former practices of pitcher use, I believe Greg Maddux is indeed the last of the 5/20 breed.