If Zach Davies does not win the game this afternoon in Los Angeles, he will set a new and largely unwanted franchise record. He has not won a game in over four months since May 13th against the Cubs. That’s a streak of 17 consecutive starts without a W, tying the current mark set by Brian Anderson in 2001-02. Oddly, both men pitched exactly the same number of innings in their winless run: 86.2. But Davies has been considerably better, with a respectable ERA of 4.26, more than two runs better than Anderson’s 6.54. This is reflected in a W-L record of 0-3 for Davies, compared to 0-8 for Anderson. Davies has just piled up the no-decisions, including the last ten starts in a row.
A long way to go for the major-league record, though that comes with a huge *. Ryne Stanek went 56 starts in a row without getting a win in 2018-19. However, he was a member of the Rays, and was acting as an opener. All those starts combined for fewer innings (83) than the Davies and Anderson streak. The “true” mark is likely 28 games, done a couple of times. Most impressive is probably that by Matt Keough of the A’s in 1978-79, who went 0-18 over a 28-game span, and averaged close to six innings per start (167 IP). Mitch White, now of the Blue Jays, has the currently active longest winless streak at 20 starts, in Toronto and Los Angeles, though last pitched out of the Blue Jays bullpen.
Davies is approaching a major-league mark with those ten no-decisions in a row. Again excluding Rays’ openers, the record is 12 starts set by Chad Green of the Yankees from 2017 through 2019. And on just two wins to date, Davies has a shot at another unwanted place in history. With the same no-openers rule, two pitchers in the live-ball era have made more than 25 starts with only two wins. Keough was 2-17 for the 1979 A’s; the other was a D-back, for at least part of that run. I refer, of course, to Vidal Nuno, who went 2-12 over his 28 starts for us and the Yankees in 2014. He was winless in his career here, going 0-8 during 14 starts and 3 relief appearances before being dealt to the Mariners.
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