The World's Worst Sports Blog

Win, 1 Batter Faced June 10, 2010

So far this year, 15 games have ended with the winning pitcher having faced only one batter. Using Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index, I ran a search for those games to examine the trends. The most recent was Elmer Dessens, but the Mets’ Pedro Feliciano leads the league with two.

The most interesting fact  to me was that only one third of the games were won by left-handed pitchers (Feliciano twice, Eric O’Flaherty, Randy Flores, and John Parrish). That doesn’t quite make sense because LHPs are more likely to come in for one batter than RHPs. (So far, 189 right-handers have games with one batter faced, compared with 198 lefties). That indicates that wins aren’t distributed uniformly across appearances.

Also interesting is the efficiency shown by Jorge Sosa in the Marlins’ May 31 game against the Brewers. He threw one pitch to pitcher Chris Narveson, who was doubled up along with catcher George Kottaras. Sosa ended up credited with 2/3 of an inning pitched and the win.