The Remarkable Control of Phil Hughes and Hisashi Iwakuma

Phil Hughes of the Minnesota Twins and Hisashi Iwakuma of the Seattle Mariners both pitched over the Labor Day weekend and both picked up wins without issuing any walks. While not unusual as single game performances, consider that Hughes now has 15 wins for the season and has allowed only 15 walks while Iwakuma has 13 wins and 13 walks. They both have the opportunity to achieve the rarest of feats if they can finish the season with as many wins as walks. Granted pitcher wins are a poor measure of baseball excellence and are generally out of favor with most readers on this site, but the rarity of their accomplishments are quite astounding and worthy of attention.

How rare? It’s rarer than a perfect game, a 4-homer game, an unassisted triple play, and a batting triple crown. The last time a qualified starter had as many wins as walks was Carlos Silva of the Twins in 2005. Silva recorded only 9 wins in his best pro season by WAR, but he also walked only nine batters. And it wasn’t a small sample size situation either. The dude started 27 games and pitched 188 innings. Unfortunately his team didn’t reward him very often in the win column. Amazingly, 2 of his 9 walks were intentional.

Before that, Bret Saberhagen recorded 14 wins and allowed a mere 13 walks with the New York Mets in 1994. Interestingly, Saberhagen’s season included zero intentional walks while Iwakuma and Hughes have both issued one IBB so far, which leads one to wonder how many walks by these control artists were actually due to wildness (or a stingy strike zone) and how many were because they were merely pitching around a batter? There could literally be zero wild walks by these four, but it’s hard to even estimate without analyzing all the gifs and then guessing.

Also of note, Hughes has hit 3 batters so far this year, which has the same effect as a walk, while Iwakuma hit 2 all season. Both of Iwakuma’s HBPs actually happened in the same game, against Boston in his 24 August start, against back-to-back batters. Silva hit a surprisingly high 3 batters in his 2005 season and Saberhagen hit 4 in 1994. Again, it’s hard to say which of these HBPs were due to wildness and which were statements or retaliation although I personally watched Iwakuma’s two HBPs on MLB.TV and they were definitely not intentional.

Prior to Saberhagen? You have to go all the way back to Slim Sallee in 1919 to find someone with as many wins as walks. Remember him? Me neither. He had 21 wins and 20 walks that year for the Cincinnati Reds over 228 IPs. In baseball terms, 1919 was before Babe Ruth became a Yankee.  He was still pitching for the Red Sox and now he’s extremely dead.  So in the last 95 MLB seasons, among thousands of qualified starting pitchers, only four people have had as many wins as walks, and two of them are doing it this year! Here’s the all time leaderborad going back to 1900 sorted by wins minus walks.

Table 1: MLB Single Season Control by Qualified Starters Ranked by Wins-Walks, 1900-2014

Rank	Name	Team	W	L	IP	BB	BB/9	ERA	WAR	YR	W-BB	IBB*	HBP
1	Christy Mathewson	Giants	25	11	306	21	0.62	2.06	5.8	1913	4		0
2	Christy Mathewson	Giants	24	13	312	23	0.66	3.00	3.2	1914	1		2
3	Slim Sallee	Reds	21	7	227	20	0.79	2.06	2.5	1919	1		1
4	Bret Saberhagen	Mets	14	4	177	13	0.66	2.74	5.1	1994	1	0	4
5	Phil Hughes	Twins	15	9	180	15	0.75	3.54	5.3	2014	0	1	3
6	Hisashi Iwakuma	Mariners	13	6	155	13	0.75	2.90	3.0	2014	0	1	2
7	Carlos Silva	Twins	9	8	188	9	0.43	3.44	2.6	2005	0	2	3
8	Greg Maddux	Braves	19	4	232	20	0.77	2.20	8.0	1997	-1	6	6
9	Babe Adams	Pirates	17	13	263	18	0.62	2.16	4.8	1920	-1		1
10	Walter Johnson	Senators	36	7	346	38	0.99	1.14	8.5	1913	-2		9
11	Cy Young	Americans	26	16	380	29	0.69	1.97	7.5	1904	-3		4
12	Tiny Bonham	Yankees	21	5	226	24	0.96	2.27	5.3	1942	-3		1
13	Bob Tewksbury	Cardinals	17	10	213	20	0.84	3.83	4.3	1993	-3	1	6
14	Cy Young	Americans	33	10	371	37	0.9	1.62	9.0	1901	-4		8
15	Deacon Phillippe	Pirates	25	9	289	29	0.9	2.43	6.4	1903	-4		4
16	Greg Maddux	Braves	19	2	209	23	0.99	1.63	7.9	1995	-4	3	4
17	Bob Tewksbury	Cardinals	16	5	233	20	0.77	2.16	3.9	1992	-4	0	3
18	La Marr Hoyt	Padres	16	8	210	20	0.86	3.47	2.8	1985	-4	2	2
19	Jon Lieber	Yankees	14	8	176	18	0.92	4.33	3.7	2004	-4	2	2
20	Babe Adams	Pirates	14	5	160	18	1.01	2.64	3.1	1921	-4		0

 

Christy Mathewson is the clear stud in this statistical category with a +4 in 1913 (with zero hit batters) and +1 the following year. Look at all the hall of famers like Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Greg Maddux mixed in with guys that had great control but less than HOF careers like Bob Tewksbury, Babe Adams, Jon Lieber and La Marr Hoyt. Now look at and appreciate some of the innings pitched by these early control artists, led by Cy Young’s incredible 380 IPs in 1904 with only 29 walks.

This being a sabermetric site, the more generally accepted advanced baseball metric for pitcher control is probably BB/9 which takes the subjectivity of wins out of the equation. By that measure, here’s the all time leaderboard since 1900.

Table 2: MLB Single Season Control by Qualified Starters Ranked by Walks per 9 Innings, 1900-2014

Rank	Name	Team	W	L	IP	BB	BB/9	ERA	WAR	YR	W-BB	IBB*	HBP
1	Carlos Silva	Twins	9	8	188	9	0.43	3.44	2.6	2005	0	2	3
2	Christy Mathewson	Giants	25	11	306	21	0.62	2.06	5.8	1913	4		0
3	Babe Adams	Pirates	17	13	263	18	0.62	2.16	4.8	1920	-1		1
4	Christy Mathewson	Giants	24	13	312	23	0.66	3.00	3.2	1914	1		2
5	Bret Saberhagen	Mets	14	4	177	13	0.66	2.74	5.1	1994	1	0	4
6	Cy Young	Americans	26	16	380	29	0.69	1.97	7.5	1904	-3		4
7	Red Lucas	Reds	10	16	219	18	0.74	3.40	2.3	1933	-8		2
8	Phil Hughes	Twins	15	9	180	15	0.75	3.54	5.3	2014	0	1	3
9	Hisashi Iwakuma	Mariners	13	6	155	13	0.75	2.90	3.0	2014	0	1	2
10	Cliff Lee	2 Teams	12	9	212	18	0.76	3.18	7.0	2010	-6	2	1
11	Greg Maddux	Braves	19	4	232	20	0.77	2.20	8.0	1997	-1	6	6
12	Bob Tewksbury	Cardinals	16	5	233	20	0.77	2.16	3.9	1992	-4	0	3
13	Cy Young	Americans	13	21	287	25	0.78	3.19	6.2	1906	-12		8
14	Slim Sallee	Reds	21	7	227	20	0.79	2.06	2.5	1919	1		1
15	Babe Adams	Pirates	17	10	263	23	0.79	1.98	5.6	1919	-6		3
16	Babe Adams	Pirates	8	11	171	15	0.79	3.57	4.2	1922	-7		4
17	Slim Sallee	Giants	8	8	132	12	0.82	2.25	2.1	1918	-4		0
18	Addie Joss	Naps	24	11	325	30	0.83	1.16	6.8	1908	-6		2
19	Cy Young	Americans	18	19	320	30	0.84	1.82	7.6	1905	-12		10
20	Bob Tewksbury	Cardinals	17	10	213	20	0.84	3.83	4.3	1993	-3	1	6

 

Who would have ever guessed that the ALL TIME LEADER in single season BB/9 is Carlos Silva in 2005? By a significant margin! Notice also that even with the elimination of wins from the discussion, Hughes and Iwakuma are still having truly historic seasons, tied for eighth on the all time list. It’s time they start getting some recognition for their accomplishments. Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012 and rightfully received notoriety for achieving a traditional statistical feat. Hughes and Iwakuma are on the verge of doing something similarly extraordinary and deserve some credit as well. I for one am going to watch closely and root for them to continue their excellence and go into the record books with at least as many wins as walks.

* Intentional walks weren’t recorded as an official statistic until 1955