The Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Stat of the Day

Reader denniscookfanclub posed the question of how many times a team has scored at least 10 runs while at least half were unearned. I’ve done a search for almost this: a pitching game finder where at least 10 runs were allowed, but no more than 5 were earned. (This is actually slightly more restrictive than denniscookfanclub’s idea.)

I was shocked to see how many such games there have been. The full list is shared here. There have been a whopping 352 such games since 1957! Here is a sample:

  Cnt Date          Tm   Opp GmReslt  IP   H  **R** ER BB SO HR Pit Str IR IS  BF  AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk Ptchrs   ERA
+—-+————-+—+—-+——-+—-+–+——+–+–+–+–+—+—+–+–+—+—+–+–+—+—+–+–+—+–+–+–+——+——+
    1 1992-06-30    TOR  TEX L 13-16  9   20   16    5  7  9  1 209 121  2  2  53  45  6  1   2   1  0  0   1  2  0  1      3   5.00
    2 1989-06-05    NYY  BAL L  3-16  9    9   16    3  5  8  3 182 107  3  3  46  41  3  0   1   0  0  0   0  0  0  0      3   3.00
    3 1985-07-27(1) HOU  NYM L  4-16  8   15   16    0  3  4  1          0  0  45  39  5  0   0   0  2  1   1  0  0  1      4   0.00
    4 1978-09-14    TEX  CAL L  1-16  9   18   16    3  2  3  2         10  9  49  45  4  0   2   0  1  1   0  1  0  0      5   3.00
    5 1976-09-12    MIN  KCR L  6-16  9   14   16    3  4  8  0          1  1  49  43  5  1   0   1  0  1   0  1  1  0      3   3.00
    6 1973-05-31    HOU  CHC L  8-16  8   14   16    3  5  8  2          5  5  47  41  1  0   1   1  0  0   0  0  0  1      5   3.38
    7 1963-09-03    CHC  SFG L  3-16  8   16   16    5  3  3  3          0  0  44  41  3  1   0   0  0  0   0  0  0  0      3   5.62
    8 1962-08-26    NYM  LAD L  5-16  9   13   16    4  6  7  2 177 108  2  2  49  41  1  1   0   1  1  0   1  4  0  0      4   4.00

16 runs is the most any team has allowed while allowing 5 or fewer earned runs. Look at that Astros/Mets game in 1985….are you kidding me? 16 runs, none earned? But indeed, the box score backs it up. The ‘Stros made 5 errors: 1 by German Rivera, one by recently-fired Astros manager Phil Garner, one by Dickie Thon, and two by first baseman Glenn Davis. Davis was a slightly below-average first baseman in his career, but still it’s rare to see two errors by a 1B in the same game. It appears all of the errors were on infield balls, either grounders or bunts.

Sort by team games in each year, we see that 4 teams have pitched 3 such games within a single season:

 Tm  Year Games Link to Individual Games
+---+----+-----+-------------------------+
 TBD 2001     3 Ind. Games
 NYM 1962     3 Ind. Games
 CLE 1975     3 Ind. Games
 CHW 1979     3 Ind. Games

That’s just sad.