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Carl Pavano & Tommy Hunter have the longest active win streaks in baseball

Posted by Andy on July 28, 2010

Here are the longest win streaks this season:

Rk Strk Start End Games W L GS IP H BB SO ERA Tm
1 CC Sabathia 2010-06-03 2010-07-22 9 9 0 9 66.0 54 22 59 2.05 NYY
2 Ubaldo Jimenez 2010-05-15 2010-07-08 9 9 0 9 67.0 44 22 52 1.75 COL
3 Carl Pavano 2010-06-09 2010-07-27 8 8 0 8 63.2 41 9 30 1.70 MIN
4 Tommy Hunter 2010-06-05 2010-07-25 8 8 0 8 54.0 44 11 24 2.00 TEX
5 Jon Lester 2010-04-28 2010-06-16 8 8 0 8 57.1 29 21 57 1.10 BOS
6 Carlos Silva 2010-04-16 2010-06-07 8 8 0 8 49.2 42 8 35 2.36 CHC
7 Joel Pineiro 2010-06-06 2010-07-15 7 7 0 7 50.1 43 13 33 2.32 LAA
8 Trevor Cahill 2010-05-21 2010-07-01 7 7 0 7 47.1 31 15 33 1.71 OAK
9 Mat Latos 2010-06-10 2010-07-24 6 6 0 6 40.2 25 7 45 1.33 SDP
10 Jason Hammel 2010-05-27 2010-07-10 6 6 0 6 40.1 36 13 29 1.56 COL
11 Freddy Garcia 2010-05-28 2010-07-07 6 6 0 6 39.2 37 9 28 3.18 CHW
12 Kris Medlen 2010-05-05 2010-07-07 6 6 0 5 35.2 32 6 24 3.28 ATL
13 R.A. Dickey 2010-05-25 2010-06-23 6 6 0 6 40.1 41 10 33 2.23 NYM
14 Johnny Cueto 2010-04-30 2010-06-12 6 6 0 6 39.0 25 10 38 2.31 CIN
15 Jeff Niemann 2010-04-19 2010-06-08 6 6 0 6 45.1 24 12 30 1.39 TBR
16 Yovani Gallardo 2010-04-21 2010-06-02 6 6 0 6 39.0 29 17 46 0.92 MIL
17 Jon Garland 2010-04-21 2010-05-25 6 6 0 6 39.0 29 15 27 1.38 SDP
18 Tyler Clippard 2010-04-08 2010-05-09 6 6 0 0 9.0 7 6 9 1.00 WSN
19 Ubaldo Jimenez 2010-04-05 2010-05-03 6 6 0 6 41.1 26 16 44 0.87 COL
Provided by View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 7/28/2010.

These are longest win streaks among games with a decision. Pavano, for example, has a few no-decision games sandwiched into his streak and those games are not counted in the stats above. He's registered 8 wins since his last loss.

Sabathia and Jimenez both had their streaks broken fairly recently, although notice that Jimenez has had two streaks long enough to make this list. Amazing.

Notice, too, that Tyler Clippard makes it!

Mat Latos has the next-longest active streak.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 10:24 am and is filed under Streak Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

13 Responses to “Carl Pavano & Tommy Hunter have the longest active win streaks in baseball”

  1. There's no right answer to this question, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway: would it be more appropriate to have the 'streak end' date be the day the streak was broken as opposed to the date of the last event?
    As an example: Sabathia's streak didn't "end" on 7/22, it ended last night when he lost.

  2. I think that's a semantic argument. His streak of wins goes through the game of 7/22 but his streak was broken in his following start. When looking back historically at streaks, the data most people want are the dates that the streak included, not the dates immediately before and after the streak.

    This reminds me of something related and silly, though. I hate it when announcers say stuff like "The Twins are 11-3 in their last 14 games!" because you know it means they are 11-4 in their last 15 games, or else if they had won that previous game the announcers would have said they were 12-3 in their last 15 games. That statement is right away picking fortuitous dates by which to measure the team's recent progress, and is therefore a deceptive stat, especially when the announcer goes on to say "that's a .786 winning percentage--if they play that way the rest of the year, they'll run away with the division!". That's so dumb since you KNOW the game right before the streak was a loss so they shouldn't quote that winning percentage from the selective period.

  3. Johnny Twisto Says:

    Not as bad as when I hear "Smith is 6 for his last 20." Um...yay?

  4. The announcers are just trying to make something interesting out of what is often randomness. If they hypothesized what the team's record would be if they continued to play at that rate, well then that's a little over the top.

  5. It's a case of being able to make almost any argument if you're selective with the information!

    I read today Dan Haren has made 190 consecutive starts (at risk after getting hit with that line drive on Monday). Is there a longer active streak? What is the record? Is there even a way of running this search? I guess it's not easy.

  6. DoubleDiamond Says:

    My pet peeve is hearing that a pitcher "struck out the side" when it wasn't a 1-2-3 inning, even though all three outs came via striekout. No, he didn't strike out the side, the way I see it, because someone managed to reach base and thus avoid getting struck out. I will compromise on this issue for situations in which any batter who reached base safely did so due to a dropped third strike.

  7. Andy-

    I feel the same way when they say things like that. You see it in basketball, too. "Team X is on a 22-2 run." Obviously, it's worth noting when a team is playing particularly well or poorly over a given stretch, but when you cherry pick stats, it is inherently misleading to emphasize a point. I prefer if they use a more static measure, such as the newspaper consistently giving the record over the last 10 or giving a stat over a specific time period such as a month. Obviously, the end points are still arbitrary, but at least they weren't contrived to emphasize the point.

  8. Basmati-

    Hard to run that kind of search. I think Bronson Arroyo and Barry Zito might have Haren beat, take a look at their game logs.

  9. there should be a "most current" or "currently active" streak option.
    Even though it might be "end" it could still be active (such as if a team gets something unusual and they last did it in 1997 but it's still active...)

  10. Thanks Dillon, this is where it gets complicated - Arroyo has made 157 starts for Cincy 2006-present but his last appearance for Boston in 2005 came in relief.

    Zito is amazing though - it doesn't look like he's ever missed a start in his whole career. He came up with Oakland 22nd July 2000 and has made 341 starts ranging from 32-35 every year. Bizarrely he made one relief appearance in 2007 on August 5th but started August 2nd and August 7th so didn't miss a start.

    I guess you can never know for sure though - in 2008 Zito made 32 starts. He started game 26 for the Giants and then next started game 34. So he was pushed back a few days, which you could technically say means he missed a scheduled start. Maybe he had a minor injury or something.

    I'm still amazed that Zito has such an impressive run. I looked at the active leaders for games started and looked for anyone who seemed they might have a similar record. Livan Hernandez has made 416 starts since the start of 1998 which I guess shows where his value lies. Mark Buerhle has started 319 games since the start of the 2001 season and CC Sabathia has 310 starts in the same time so they're about one season behind Zito. Jon Garland hasn't made less than 32 starts since the start of 2002 (280 total). Felix Hernandez has 160 starts in just under 5 years.

    So I guess Haren has a way to go yet. Lets hope he gets out there on Saturday.

  11. Hey nice shout out for the "Yankee Clippard". That nick name did not last long (only 6 games).

    I liked him when he was on the Yanks, nice to see him pitching well.

  12. Carl Pavano is another story.

  13. What do you mean? Pavano's Yankee career lasted about 6 games too :)