On Monday night, Seattle had its way with Tampa Bay, with a 12-5 thumping that stood at 8-0 after two innings. Mariner hitters feasted on the offerings of Rays’ starter Cesar Ramos who was abandoned by his defense which committed 4 errors in those first two frames.

What was notable about this game, though, was this – Ramos stayed in to pitch 6.2 innings, holding Seattle scoreless over the last 3.2 IP of that stint. It was the first game this season with a starter going 6+ innings and allowing 9 or more runs. There was only one such game last year, by Ramos’s teammate David Price, and none in 2012.

These games haven’t always been so rare (this was the 268th such start since 1946), but staying in for 6+ innings after allowing 8 runs over the first two frames is very rare indeed. More on starters who “take one for the team” after the jump.

With the advent of pitching staffs that outnumber position players, leaving a starter in a game to take a licking has become much more unusual than in seasons past. Here’s the chart.

Relative to the number of games played, the incidence of such games over the past 5 seasons is at historic low levels, though not far off what was experienced in the mid-1980s. The spike from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s is in part attributable to a certain ballpark – 13 of the 70 such games since 1995 have been played at Coors Field.

These are the pitchers with the most such games since 1946.

Note the presence of three HOFers on the list including one who makes the list with only part of his career represented. Ned Garver shows a winning record in such games, a most ironic quirk since Garver has by far the lowest W-L% of any pitcher with his career ERA+ (the overall W-L for all 268 games is 30-238, including 8-29 when the pitcher went the distance).

Here are the most such starts in any single season.

Many of the same names. Note though that only three of the thirteen seasons occurred in the past 35 years, with those three coming in just a 5 year span.

Of course, many of these games may not be a case of a pitcher hanging in there while he gets pounded on. Since the search criteria available in P-I only provide a game view, can’t say how many of these 268 games are like Cesar Ramos’s outing on Monday, how many might be a case of a pitcher being pecked and nibbled at throughout the game, and how many may be a case of a pitcher being left in the game too long and having a big number hung on him in his last inning of work.

To get some idea of how unusual Ramos’s game was, I looked through the list of 268 games for those games where the pitcher allowed 8+ runs through his first two innings. As might be expected, that reduced the list considerably, to only these contests.

So a few relatively recently and a couple 60+ years ago, but nothing in between. All but the Kellner game bore resemblance to Cesar Ramos’ game in that, after getting tattooed early, the pitcher had some effective innings.

• Mark Redman allowed a 10-spot in the 1st inning, then held the Dodgers at bay for the next 5 frames, allowing only a single and two walks over that span. Nine of those 10 first inning runs came after two were out and the bases empty, from single, walk, walk, walk, single, single, double, HBP, home run.
• After back-to-back jacks in the 1st inning, the flood gates opened for Jaime Navarro in the second frame with 6 runs crossing on two doubles, three singles and three walks. Then no damage until the 7th inning when Navarro got out of a one-out bases loaded jamb allowing only a sac fly.
• Alex Kellner and Carl Scheib really took one for Connie Mack’s As, each going the distance in a lopsided loss. Kellner at least can say he held the Red Sox off the score sheet for half of the innings he pitched. Despite allowing 18 hits and 8 walks, Scheib managed to confine the damage to just two frames, an 8-run 1st inning (the first 7 Sox batters  reached base) and 4 more in the 8th.

If you’re wondering why I cut off the search at 1946, it’s not complicated. In contrast to the 268 games since 1946, there were 998 such games from 1914 to 1945, including 13 games in which both starters were bloodied and bruised.