Through the first two months of the Major League Baseball season, some of the game’s starting pitchers are still undefeated. It may still be a little early, but some of these pitchers could challenge the single season winning percentage of .947 (18-1) set by Roy Face of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1959. To match this record, one of these pitchers would have to go all season without losing a game, or win more than 19 games, and only lose one. This would be a pretty big stretch for anyone, even the game’s greatest pitchers, but let’s take a quick look at the four remaining undefeated starters from this season.
Patrick Corbin, Arizona Diamondbacks
Corbin has been one of the hottest pitchers in baseball this season. He has an ERA of 2.06 and a WHIP of 1.05. The lefty has been a great pitcher this year, but he isn’t a high strikeout guy. Part of his great performance this year is his low batting average for balls in play by opposing hitters (BABIP). His BABIP is .256, so he’s getting a lot of outs on balls put in play. The second-year pitcher is having a great year, but if anyone was going to challenge the win percentage record, it would probably be someone who is getting more strikeouts, where fewer batters are putting the ball in play.
Clay Buchholz, Boston Red Sox
Buchholz has been a consistently good pitcher for a few seasons now, and he’s established himself as one of the best pitchers, with some of the nastiest movement in baseball. The legitimacy of that movement has been questioned lately, and thought to be a product of a mixture of sunscreen and rosin aiding his movement. Buchholz has squashed this controversy by pitching just as well since the allegations, and is on his way to an All-Star season. Buchholz is on pace to record the highest strikeout/9 innings pitched ratio of his career at 8.9 this season, and his ERA is an incredible 1.62. Buchholz’s issue might be injury concern. Since he started his major league career in 2007, Buchholz has only had two seasons where he has started more than 16 games.
Matt Moore, Tampa Bay Rays
Another young lefty on the list of undefeated pitchers this year, Moore has started this season 8-0. As a September call-up in 2011, Moore was impressive enough to earn himself a five-year contract. Moore had an 11-11 year in his first full season last year, but pitched a lot better than his record would indicate. Moore’s stats this year are similar to Corbin’s. Moore is striking out a few more guys, but his BABIP is .206, even lower then Corbin’s, which suggests he is getting even luckier than Corbin this season.
Max Scherzer, Detroit Tigers
Scherzer might be pitching as well as anyone else on this list. Scherzer is one of the hardest throwing power pitchers in baseball, and he is about as unhittable as anyone else in the league. Scherzer is 8-0 so far this season, and is on pace to shatter his best full-season WHIP ratio at 0.891 so far. He’s striking out a ton of guys as usual, as he led the league in his strikeout/ 9 innings pitched ratio last season. If anyone on this list could break the record, I would go with Scherzer, but the record is so difficult, I don’t think he could do it either.
None of the names on this list are real huge superstars yet. Some of the greatest pitchers of all time have come close to this record, more recently Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, and Cliff Lee, but you have to think if none of those guys could break the record, than the young pitchers on this list probably won’t either. Either way, these four pitchers should be very exciting to watch for the rest of this season.