Four different starters have suffered a loss this season, going just six innings, striking out six batters and allowing just seven hits, three earned runs and no earned runs. All three of them faced exactly the same number of batters. But all four pitchers finished the game with different pitches because they walked different numbers of batters. Our regular season database dates back to 1871 and contains 241,730 games, each one unique. In 1927, Bob Smith faced a record 89 batters in a 22-inning, 4-3 loss to the Cubs. In 2021, Pablo López became the first starter ever to be charged with a loss when he struck out the only batter he faced. There may be 50 ways to leave a loved one and 5,000 ways to die, but the ways to lose a baseball game are not subject to any such restrictions.
I can keep going. In 1959, Harvey Haddix was perfect in 12 innings, but lost the game in the 13th inning with a perfect score. Five years later, Ken Johnson of the Houston Colts .45 pitched the only no-hitter in history, which ended in failure. I bring up these performances because when watching these postseason games, I can’t help but think of those pitchers who suffered losses despite pitching well. Just last night, in an NLDS game between the Dodgers and Phillies, Jesús Luzardo pitched six scoreless innings, retired 17 consecutive batters, but took the loss when two inherited runners were scored. Last week, Nick Pivetta allowed two runs in five innings to the Cubs, the same day Gavin Williams allowed two runs in six innings to the loss.
Today, we’re specifically looking for pitchers who will perform well in all losses during the 2025 season. This doesn’t necessarily mean the pitchers with the worst run support or defense overall. It just means that, especially in the games they lost, they pitched exceptionally well. Bad luck losses always happen. As Jacob deGrom will tell you from long experience, any good pitcher who can hold the other team to a single run will eventually lose 1-0. (In fact, the top five in Stathead’s search are all Hall of Famers, with Walter Johnson and Nolan Ryan tied at No. 63. Surprisingly, Johnson, the second-winningest pitcher in history, also lost 13 games in which he didn’t allow a run, the most ever.) But it takes a combination of factors to arrive at a massive number for all losses at the end of the season.
Just ask Quinn Priest. After years of prospect hype, Prest posted a 3.32 ERA and a 13-3 record for the Brewers this season. Although he only lost three games, he had a 3.00 ERA in those losses, the highest ERA of any starter with more than one loss. Priest allowed five earned runs in three losses in 15 innings. His FIP is 2.30, but the Brewers have allowed a total of two runs in those three games, and errors cost Priest two runs. The Brewers have the ninth-best offense and sixth-best defense in the game this season and are on the verge of sweeping the Cubs in the NLDS. This is simply bad luck.
Logan Webb is having arguably the best season of his outstanding career, ranking fifth among all pitchers with 5.5 WAR, but he’s also known to have bad luck. He has a 3.22 overall ERA and a 2.60 FIP, giving him his fifth consecutive season in 2025 with a sub-3.50 ERA and sub-3.20 FIP. However, it’s easy to imagine things being better for Weber. He finished with a 15-11 record, a total of 26 sacks that tied him for third in baseball. As you’d expect, he makes so many decisions since he leads all of baseball with 207 innings pitched. Weber performed an inverse ERA analysis and had a winning score of 2.40 and a losing score of 4.20, but don’t let that fool you. In his 11 losses, he had a 2.97 FIP as he struck out 67 batters and walked just 10. In his losses, the Giants averaged less than two points per game and went over three just three times. Seven times this season, Webb has either lost or had a no-decision despite allowing two runs or fewer, and he has gone at least six innings in six of those seven starts. If Webb had had a little more bounce, he might have had 20 wins, and we might have ended up with an old-fashioned debate about whether Paul Skenes really deserves the NL Cy Young title with a 10-10 record and 1.97 ERA.
Speaking of Skenes, the presumptive Cy Young certainly hasn’t been terrible in his 10 losses; he has a 4.29 ERA and 4.23 FIP. However, in those 10 losses, the Buccaneers have only scored a total of 11 points – just 11 points in 10 games! Somehow, when Skenes left those games, he had kept the Buccaneers’ lead to within two points six times. Unfortunately for him, they could only score a total of two points after his departure.
Bryan Woo deserves special mention here. Although he lost seven games, posted a 4.98 ERA and a 5.07 FIP, he was the only pitcher in baseball to average more than six innings lost per start. Mariners head coach Dan Wilson has really given Wu a deep job, and even more impressively, he doesn’t seem to feel guilty about keeping the ace around until he breaks out. In those seven losses, Yu only took the lead in the final inning, and Wilson only pulled him once in the middle inning.
Finally we look at another playoff player, Tyler Glasnow. Glasnow appeared in 18 games during the regular season, but in his three losses, he held opposing hitters to a paltry .510 OPS. That was the lowest mark among 199 different pitchers to lose at least three games this season and nearly 100 points lower than Glasnow’s win and no-decision mark of .607 OPS. He gave up just one homer in those three losses and had a WHIP of 0.88, but the Dodgers allowed just two runs total in those three losses.
All of the performances I highlight here are impressive in their own way, but I’ve also checked the historical record and we haven’t seen any truly impressive bad luck this year. If you search Stathead for the best ERA pitchers of all time, you’ll find that 15 different pitchers lost at least 5 games in a season while totaling zero ERA, including Cy Young in 1906. Only two pitchers have even cracked the top 100 this century. The biggest reason among them is that ERA has been on a steep decline since the beginning of baseball history, as you can see from this UERA chart (that’s an unearned running average, for starters):
In 1900, 31% of runs were unearned. This year, that number is just under 8%. This is easy to explain. Fielding’s performance has improved significantly over the years and, as Sam Miller has documented, score inflation has found its way to the official scorers’ desks, making mistakes more difficult than ever. Knowing this, you might think that there’s no way today’s pitchers could have a historic season without some bad luck, but that’s not the case. If we look at the lowest post-WWII losses-only ERA, we see a large number of entries from 1968 (Year of the Pitcher™️), but a third of those entries are from the past 25 years, and two of them are from the past decade. Michael Pineda’s 2014 season tops the list. Pineda went 5-5 that season with a 1.89 ERA. In those five losses, his ERA was still a staggering 2.08. Unfortunately for Pineda, the Yankees only scored two runs in those five games!
Best loss-only era since 1946
Source: Stathead
At least five losses.
Unsurprisingly, deGrom’s Cy Young 2018 season is also on the list. He joins Bob Gibson and Pedro Martinez in winning the award and making the list. DeGrom went 10-9 and the Mets scored a total of 11 runs in those nine games. What I really want you to pay attention to, though, are Clark Schmidt’s lines. Just last year, Schmidt had a 2.77 ERA in five losses! Schmidt went 5-5, allowing the Yankees 11 runs in his five losses. However, 8 of these 11 games were back Schmidt has left the game! Even more unfortunate for Schmutt, the Yankees won all six of his no-decisions! The Yankees had no problem scoring during Schmidt’s starts. It’s just that they weren’t willing to do that when he was actually on the mound and could benefit from them.
All of which is to say that even though no one cracks this roster this year, today’s pitchers still have a chance. With the right combination of great pitching, negligible run support, poor defense, and inherited runner-up runs all season long, anyone could end up at the top of this questionable stat-head search. However, they may not consider this good news.
