The Wilbur Wood Start

Watching the Dodgers-Giants game tonight and it appears as though Tim Lincecum is in line for the loss despite going 7 innings and giving up no earned runs. Of course, he qualifies for the loss because Matt Kemp scored on a throwing error during the sixth inning. Now I don't want to get into the ridiculousness of wins and losses, and what they really represent in regards to pitching performance, but I wanted to see how often pitchers take losses under similar circumstances.

Enter the Baseball-Reference.com play index. Since 1970, there have been 389 games where a pitcher has tossed 7 innings while giving up zero earned runs and being tagged with the loss. Five pitchers have actually been hung with the loss four different times during this period; here they are with total career starts in parentheses:

Wilbur Wood (297), Fernando Valenzuela (424), Charlie Hough (440), Nolan Ryan (773), and Tim Belcher (373).

Wilbur Wood appears to be the pitcher with the hardest luck out of this group, by virtue of doing it in the least amount of starts, and has thus earned the title for this manner of start. From now on when a pitcher goes 7 innings without giving up an earned run and takes the loss I will be dubbing it a Wilbur Wood start. Or WW start. Or W squared. You get it.

*Side notes: Yes, this does indeed add further to the mysteries behind knuckle-ballers as both Hough and Wood mastered the pitch. Wood was also the last pitcher in baseball history to both win and lose 20 games in a season (24-20 in 1973).